A terrorist drone managed on Wednesday to infiltrate Israel from the Gaza Strip for the first time since November, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
“A short time ago, a suspicious aerial target crossed [into Israel] from the territory of the Gaza Strip” and fell in an open area near the border, said the IDF. The drone set off air-raid sirens in the towns of Kibbutz Holit, Nir Yitzhak and Sufa.
The Eshkol Regional Council, which administers the area, said the incident took place around 6 a.m. It claimed the drone was shot down, and no injuries or damages were reported.
The last time a terrorist UAV successfully infiltrated Israeli airspace from the Strip was on Nov. 11, according to IDF data. That drone was also intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense system.
Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 following a weeks-long air campaign in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks in the northwestern Negev, in which terrorists massacred 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and abducted more than 250 men, women and children to Gaza.
According to IDF data last updated on May 15, some 9,300 launches have been detected towards Israel from Gaza since Oct. 7.
Jerusalem’s stated war goals are to destroy Hamas as a military and governing force in Gaza, ensure that it can not threaten Israel again and return all hostages.
The IDF has dismantled most of Hamas’s 24 battalions in Gaza, and since May has been fighting the remaining four in the last Hamas stronghold of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.
The IDF’s 401st Brigade combat team have been engaging the terror group’s Tel Sultan Battalion in western Rafah, the military said on Tuesday afternoon.
Troops are “destroying terrorist infrastructure and eliminating dozens of armed terrorists in above- and below-ground encounters, fighting in precise and intelligence-based operations,” the IDF announced.
Out of the four battalions in Rafah before the IDF ground incursion, two—Yabna (south) and east Rafah—have been almost completely dismantled, while Israeli forces continue to engage the other two—Tel Sultan and Shaboura (north).
