Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli occupation fire in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, while the occupation army announced the killing of two officers and a soldier during the battles in the Gaza Strip.

Al Jazeera's correspondent said that the Israeli army targeted ambulances while they were trying to recover the bodies of dead in the Tal Al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah.

The correspondent said earlier that the occupation army bombed the Tal Al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah, with artillery.

For its part, the occupation army said that there is no ceasefire in the southern Gaza Strip, and that fighting in Rafah continues.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, said that it had caught “a Zionist force penetrating the Saudi neighborhood in Rafah in a precise ambush,” confirming that it had blown up a vehicle and killed its members.

The occupation army announced on Sunday that two officers from the Eighth Brigade were killed in battles in the northern Gaza Strip, and it also announced that a soldier from the 601st Division of the Corps of Engineers was killed during battles in the Gaza Strip.

Yesterday, the occupation army announced the killing of 8 soldiers in Rafah in an ambush by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). One of them was Captain Waseem Mahmoud, who is deputy company commander in the 601st Engineering Battalion.

The Al-Qassam Brigades announced yesterday that its fighters were able to kill a group of Israeli soldiers in an ambush in a combined operation against occupation army vehicles penetrating the Saudi neighborhood of Tal al-Sultan, west of the city of Rafah.

In this regard, Israeli Army Reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik said, “What is happening in Rafah is a disgrace. We are not actually fighting Hamas. Rather, they are bombing the roads and we are killing.” He added that they have reduced the army’s capacity in 20 years, “until it is no longer able to defeat Hamas.”

Brick also stressed that the war in Gaza has lost its purpose and is continuing only for the benefit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the same context, an Israeli officer told the Walla website that the operation in Rafah had become the center of criticism in the field, and that it should have been carried out in a different way. The website indicated that there is a feeling among reserve officers that there is no clear goal for many of the missions in the Gaza Strip.

The website stressed that "the pattern of the Rafah operation is proceeding incompletely and should have been completed faster."

On the other hand, the leader of the Israeli Labor Party, Yair Golan, said that Israel must oblige everyone to bear the burden of military and security service, pointing to an unprecedented security crisis that Israel is going through.

Source: Al Jazeera