The Israeli army has taken control of the entire part of the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said late on Wednesday.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had gained operational control of the area known as the Philadelphi Corridor, on the border between Egypt and Rafah, Hagari said.
The IDF had found about 20 tunnels used by the Palestinian militant group Hamas to smuggle weapons into Gaza there, Hagari said.
The information could not initially be independently verified.
Fighting has continued in southern Gaza despite continued calls from world leaders for Israel to immediately halt the operation.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed when a booby trap exploded in a building in Rafah, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
The Israeli army confirmed that three soldiers from the Nahal infantry brigade had been killed in fighting the previous day.
During the operation, Israeli soldiers went from house to house looking for weapons, the army said, without commenting specifically on where or how they died. According to local media, it happened in a booby-trapped building in Rafah.
According to the military, Tuesday’s incident means that 639 Israeli soldiers have been killed and more than 3,600 others injured since the Oct. 7 massacres by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza.
Hamas fired on an Israeli border community from the West Bank, according to a video released by Hamas on Wednesday.
Israeli Army Radio reported that there were no casualties in Bat Hefer, a village located near the barrier separating Israel and the occupied West Bank, but there was material damage.
The attackers, seen wearing Hamas headbands, came from a refugee neighborhood in the Palestinian West Bank town of Tulkarm.
The Israeli army has carried out repeated raids on Tulkarm and other Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank.
Since the start of the Gaza war following the October 7 Hamas massacre, the situation in the West Bank has become more tense.
According to the West Bank Ministry of Health, about 500 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli military operations, clashes or their own attacks. Israeli settlers have also taken violent action against Palestinians.
More than 36,100 people have been killed by Israel in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-led health authority.
Israel’s national security adviser says the war is likely to continue at least until the end of the year.
“We can expect at least seven more months of fighting this year,” Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel’s Kan Channel. This was necessary to destroy Hamas’s regime and military capabilities, he said.
The army had defined 2024 in its plans as the “year of battle,” Hanegbi said. “We need stamina and endurance.”
The border area between Egypt and the Gaza Strip had become a “smugglers’ paradise” over the past 17 years, he added, saying together with Egypt it was necessary to ensure that arms smuggling would not take place there in the future.
Egypt has said a total of 1,500 tunnels have been destroyed in the border area since 2013.
Israel’s advance into the corridor represents a new test for its relations with neighboring Egypt. The two countries signed a peace treaty in 1979, establishing the corridor as a buffer zone.
Egypt said in January that an “occupation” of the corridor by Israel would be a violation of the treaty.
Hanegbi said Israel will likely maintain security control in the long term “because there are no other volunteers,” adding that Israel does not seek civilian rule in the coastal strip and hopes for new Palestinian leadership.
For Israel, however, this would only be possible on the ‘day after Hamas’.
Israeli leaders remain committed to their goal of eliminating the last battalions of Hamas.
