GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) -- The Qassam Brigades, the paramilitary wing of Hamas, said Sunday that its fighters “eliminated” a number of Israeli soldiers after luring them into “a previously booby-trapped tunnel shaft” in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
“As soon as a number of soldiers advanced to the tunnel shaft, it was blown up, killing and wounding them,” the group said in a statement on Telegram.
It added that its fighters targeted two Israeli tanks with Al-Yassin 105 rockets in the area.
Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video address earlier Sunday that two Israeli soldiers were killed in Rafah in the morning.
The Israeli military said Captain Noam Ravid, 23, and Staff Sergeant Yaly Seror, 20, from the Yahalom combat engineering unit, were scanning the entrance to a tunnel inside a building when they were hit by an explosion on Saturday.
Two other Zionist soldiers from the same unit were injured in the blast, one of them severely, it added.
Netanyahu convened his security cabinet later Sunday to discuss the expansion of the onslaught on Gaza, two officials said.
In a video message posted on the social media platform X on Sunday, Netanyahu said he was convening the security cabinet to discuss “the next stage” of the war in Gaza.
It was unclear if the ministers would give final approval at the meeting, but the military has already begun issuing tens of thousands of call-up orders for its reserve forces, looking to expand the Gaza campaign, its chief said on Sunday.
Already occupying almost a third of Gaza’s territory, Israel has faced growing international pressure to lift an aid blockade that it imposed in March after the collapse of a U.S.-backed ceasefire that had halted fighting for two months.
Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, killing about 52,500 Palestinians, according to local health authorities and devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving its 2.3 million population depending on aid supplies that have been dwindling rapidly since the blockade.