The IDF started moves on Thursday for a third invasion of Khan Yunis, eight days after it concluded its second invasion on July 30.
In early December, the IDF invaded Khan Yunis for the first time, fighting heavily with Hamas until achieving operational control in early February.
On April 7, the IDF withdrew from Khan Yunis for the first time, only to return until July 22, when it said Hamas was trying to reconstitute itself, including having fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel.
On Thursday, the IDF renewed its calls to Palestinians in Khan Yunis to evacuate to the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone. It was the shortest amount of time by far in which the military decided to return to an area it had just invaded.
Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, published a list of the zones that need to be evacuated alongside the latest announcement. They include the Khan Yunis suburbs of al-Qarara and Bani Suheila, the Abasan neighborhoods, and the town of Khuza’a.
The IDF would “forcefully operate” against terrorist groups in the Khan Yunis area, Adraee said.
IDF sources declined to explain why the military had radically altered its method of operation by reinvading so soon after withdrawing. Until now, essentially all of about 10 reinvasions of portions of Gaza took place only several months after the IDF had withdrawn from the area in question.
What are the costs of a reinvasion?
There are significant costs to such reinvasions. They usually involve forcing the Palestinian civilian population to move in a large wholesale fashion, something that not only harms the civilians but continues to tear down Israel’s legitimacy globally.
One possibility for the change was that Hamas returned to the Khan Yunis area faster than in other areas.Another possibility is that the IDF is on the verge of shifting to intervening in Gaza more often but for shorter periods.
A third possibility is that the latest reinvasion is cover for some other goal. Multiple reinvasions led to either finding additional hostage bodies, as happened in Khan Yunis on July 25, or rescuing additional hostages.
IDF kills senior Hamas official
Meanwhile, the IDF on Thursday announced it had previously killed Nael Sakhel, a senior Hamas official residing in Gaza who was among the key leaders directing terrorist attacks against Israelis in the West Bank for years.
Although the announcement came Thursday after enough evidence emerged of his death, the actual IAF strike that killed him took place on July 24, the IDF said.
Separately, Nahal forces killed terrorists in close-range encounters and destroyed terrorist infrastructure in the Rafah area in southern Gaza, including a booby-trapped building in the Tel al-Sultan region, the IDF reported Thursday morning.
Moreover, the Givati and Nahal Brigades, under the command of Division 162, raided several other military sites in the Rafah area, the IDF said.
IDF Division 252 continued operations in central Gaza with a combat team directing an aircraft to strike and destroy a lookout post where terrorists were operating.
In addition, the IAF attacked dozens of terrorist targets across the Gaza Strip. Among the targets attacked was a military structure that Hamas forces were using to coordinate firing on IDF forces and other military infrastructure.
Fighter jets, in coordination with Southern Command, attacked and destroyed a launch site in northern Gaza from which fire had been directed toward southern Israel.
Later Thursday, the Nahal Brigade located terrorist shafts while operating in Rafah within residential homes and attacked a terrorist squad hiding in an apartment.
The team found passages in the walls, made by terrorists, to pass between the houses of civilians to ambush the IDF and use citizens as human shields.
In another residence, a shaft was located by a drone in the bathroom, the IDF said.
WCK member killed in Gaza
Also on Thursday, the World Central Kitchen (WCK) humanitarian aid organization said a Palestinian staff member had been killed in Gaza.
It identified the victim as Nadi Sallout and said it believed he was killed while off duty on Wednesday near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. The WCK said it was still seeking further details.
The IDF told both The Jerusalem Post and Reuters it did not know of any such incident, adding that it had been in contact with WCK.
“Thus far, the IDF is unaware of any incident in which an employee of the organization was harmed during his work in recent days,” it said.
In a post on X, WCK described Sallout as “an integral member of our warehouse team from the early days of our response in Rafah and a humanitarian at his very core.”
On April 1, three Israeli airstrikes mistakenly hit a convoy of aid vehicles traveling through Gaza, believing that they were Hamas terrorists, killing seven WCK staff and drawing a major spike in international outrage.
In the North on Thursday, Hezbollah fired about 25 rockets into Israel. Many of them fell in open areas. Air-raid sirens went off Thursday afternoon, but no casualties or damage were reported from the rockets.
The IDF responded by attacking five different areas where Hezbollah is operating in southern Lebanon and directed artillery fire to the sources of Hezbollah’s attacks.
Earlier, overlapping between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the IDF said it had attacked Hezbollah in two other areas of its operations.
Reuters contributed to this report.