Palestinian witnesses and paramedics announced that the Israeli military forces managed to kill five more Palestinians and injure 15 others, including four with serious wounds, during another raid in the city of Khan Younis, the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning, during another episode of the 4-month Israeli military intervention in the Palestinian territories, in order to rescue the 19 year old Israeli tank gunner who had been kidnapped by three Palestinian factions at the end of June.

The witnesses highlighted that four of the victims belonged to the same family, all of them members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, while the fifth one was a 13 year old boy.

The IDF had entered several neighborhoods of the city in the early hours of the morning, being sustained by military gunship helicopters and tanks, when they were fired at with antitank missiles by a group of gunmen. The Israeli army retaliated with snipers fatally injuring two of the gunmen who were rushed to a hospital, yet they died shortly after.

The news were confirmed by an Israeli forces spokesman, who highlighted that the reason the Israeli forces were in that particular area, was because they had received some intelligence regarding several weapons facilities that were being used by the militants." This is an area believed to conceal tunnels and other forms of infrastructure used by terrorist groups", the spokesperson stated. Another mission of the IDF in the area was to destroy an alleged weapons storage facility in the northern part of Gaza, specifically the Jabaliya refugee camp.