The Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out a series of powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday morning, after IDF reservist Master Sgt. Yonah Efraim Feldbaum was killed in a Hamas attack in Rafah on Tuesday.
The Hamas ceasefire violation came shortly after revelations that the remains returned by the terror group the previous night were not new, but additional remains belonging to a hostage whose partial remains had already been recovered by the IDF earlier in the war.
On Tuesday, the IDF released drone footage showing that Hamas did not actually discover the remains during its excavations, but had staged a fake retrieval operation for the cameras of Red Cross representatives.
The Israeli government cited these actions as violations of the ceasefire agreement and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IAF to carry out “powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip” against Hamas targets.
“Following the security consultations, Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the military echelon to carry out immediate and powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced on Tuesday.
Palestinian sources reported strikes in several locations across the Gaza Strip, while the Hamas-run Gaza civil defense agency reported that at least 50 people were killed in Israeli strikes overnight.
The slain soldier, Feldbaum (37), a soldier in the Combat Engineering Corps, was a heavy machinery operator under the Gaza Division. A native of Zayit Raanan in Samaria, he leaves behind a wife and five children.
According to an initial IDF investigation, terrorists fired on an army excavator in Rafah’s Jenina neighborhood, killing Feldbaum. Shortly after that, the terrorists fired RPGs toward IDF troops, hitting an armored vehicle. There were no additional injuries reported from the RPG strike.
The terrorists responsible for the attack fled the scene, and Israeli security forces are currently conducting a manhunt to locate them.
While the area of the attack is located inside the Yellow Line — and under Israeli control as part of the ceasefire — the IDF believes there are several terror operatives hiding in a “pocket” within the Jenina neighborhood, likely near an undiscovered tunnel shaft. The military believes the terror cell may carry out further attacks until its location has been identified.
IDF soldiers from the Nahal Reconnaissance Battalion are operating in the area to locate and destroy remaining terror infrastructure east of the Yellow Line. During a similar attack on an engineering vehicle last week in the same neighborhood, two soldiers were killed.
Israel has blamed Hamas for both attacks, but the terror group has denied any involvement.
The terrorist organization said it would be delaying the handover of another set of hostage remains, citing Israeli “violations” of the ceasefire. Hamas said it had previously planned to transfer the remains on Wednesday evening.
Israel accuses Hamas of deliberately delaying the release of hostage remains in order to drag out the first phase of the ceasefire. Hamas has not released any hostages’ bodies in over a week, despite U.S. President Donald Trump setting a 48-hour deadline earlier this week.
Following the Israeli strikes on Hamas, President Trump said he believed “nothing” would endanger the ceasefire, while defending Israel’s right to retaliate.
“They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” he told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday night.
This article was originally published by All Israel News.
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