The Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian resistance movements engaged in fierce ground battles in Beit Lahia and eastern Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, on Saturday. The resistance also launched dozens of mortar shells at the occupation forces. The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hama), announced that it targeted the Sderot settlement with a barrage of missiles. Al-Qassam said that it fired an Ayyash 250 missile at the port of Eilat in retaliation for the massacres against civilians. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Israeli army "intercepted a missile fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip towards the city of Eilat in the south of the country." The distance between Gaza and Eilat is 250 kilometres, which is the farthest distance that Hamas missiles have reached so far, according to Haaretz. Al-Qassam also claimed that its fighters attacked a "Zionist force" hiding in a building northwest of Gaza City, and clashed with it using machine guns and explosives, confirming that five soldiers were killed and others wounded. Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army spokesman Daniel Hajri announced in a press conference that the families of 242 people who were captured by Hamas in the Gaza Strip were notified, in addition to informing the families of 341 occupation soldiers who were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle. The Israeli occupation army also destroyed two mosques in the Al-Zaytoun and Al-Sabra neighbourhoods, south of Gaza City, on Saturday. Anadolu Agency reported that the Israeli army demolished the Ali bin Abi Talib Mosque on Street 8 in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, and the Al-Istiqaba Mosque in the Al-Sabra neighbourhood, within two hours. The Israeli occupation army said, in a statement on Saturday morning, that its armoured and engineering units cleared some buildings and defused explosive devices, in a concentrated incursion into the southern Gaza Strip, claiming to have encountered an armed cell emerging from a tunnel opening, and eliminated its members. The occupation army also claimed to have killed militants, found weapons belonging to Hamas, and discovered tunnel openings during the previous night's attempts to attack Israeli forces penetrating the northern Gaza Strip. The army said that its forces clashed with 15 militants in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, and killed some of them, adding that tank fire hit three Hamas observation posts. Moreover, the Israeli army bombed the vicinity of Al-Quds Hospital, where 21 Palestinians were injured, and killed 15 others and wounded dozens in an Israeli air strike that targeted a United Nations school sheltering displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp. In addition, the Israeli army bombed the vicinity of Al-Wafa Hospital and the gate of Al-Nasr Children's Hospital, causing many casualties. The Ministry of Health in Gaza denied that Hamas used an ambulance that Israel targeted in front of the Shifa Medical Complex.
