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Israeli Forces Push Deeper Into Gaza Strip
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It was Israel's first fatality of the ground invasion, which began Saturday night and followed a week-long air assault on Gaza. Eighteen other Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded Sunday.
The Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba had admitted 15 soldiers by midday Sunday, said Shlomi Codish, the deputy director general. Three were severely wounded. All had shrapnel wounds from a mortar shell, he said.
One of the wounded soldiers, who gave his first name as Yakov, left the hospital Sunday afternoon in a wheelchair, with a jagged red line and a row of black stitches running across his throat. He had been wounded around midnight the previous evening, just hours after troops entered Gaza.
"A mortar landed right in the middle of my platoon," he said. The shrapnel had missed his windpipe by less than an inch.
The Israeli military said "a few dozens of Hamas" fighters had been hit since the ground offensive began. Hamas remained defiant. Ismail Radwan, a Hamas leader, addressed Israeli soldiers Sunday in a radio and television broadcast.
"Gaza will not be a picnic," he said. "Gaza will be a graveyard for you."
Israeli jets struck 40 targets, including tunnels and weapons storage facilities, the Israeli military said. The military has prevented foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip, making it difficult to verify reports.
Hamas on Sunday said it captured two Israeli soldiers during the operation and was holding them hostage, according to a Hamas radio and television broadcast. But a senior Israeli military official denied the report early Sunday.
"As far as we know, it's not true," said the official, who briefed foreign journalists on the condition of anonymity.
The senior Israeli military official cautioned that the ground offensive would not end "in hours or a few days." He described the terrain as "challenging" and "well prepared by Hamas" during the six-month cease-fire with Israel.
"There are a lot of obstacles on the ground. Hamas is using methods that were imported from Iran and Hezbollah," he said, referring to the Lebanese Shiite militia that Israel fought to a standoff in the summer of 2006. Those methods, he added, were "guerrilla concepts and tactics, exploiting both open areas and those of highest density of population." The official also sought to play down Israeli expectations, saying that the military does not expect to "zero-ize" the number of rockets landing in Israel, but rather to decrease the number. On Sunday, roughly 40 rockets and mortar shells landed in and around the Israeli border towns of Ashkelon, Sderot, Netivot, Ashdod and Ofakim. One missile struck a house in Sderot, injuring a woman, the Israeli military said.
Inside Gaza, reports from local journalists and eyewitnesses described scenes of fear, destruction and worsening food shortages. Many Gazans barricaded themselves in their homes, while others risked fleeing on the streets. More than 3,000 people have been displaced by the conflict and have sought haven in U.N. shelters.
