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Soldiers find Rafah tunnel shaft under child’s bedroom

A butcher’s knife was found next to the entrance.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

Soldiers operating in Rafah in recent days uncovered a tunnel shaft inside a child’s bedroom, the Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday.

A butcher’s knife was found next to the entrance.

Elsewhere in Rafah, soldiers identified and eliminated six armed terrorists near a school close to where troops were operating. The squad was eliminated by drone and tank fire.

Meanwhile, the number of casualties from an Israeli airstrike on a Hamas compound inside a UNRWA school in Nuseirat remained unclear. Reuters quoted UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma saying that “35-45 people” were killed, but could not confirm the number nor indicate how many of the deaths were combatants.

The IDF said it killed 20-30 members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force and Palestinian Islamic Jihad hiding inside three rooms.

“The terrorists directed terror from the area of the school while exploiting it and using it as a shelter. Several terrorists who planned to carry out terror attacks and promote terrorist activities against IDF troops in the immediate time frame were eliminated in the strike,” the IDF said.

“Before the strike, a number of steps were taken to reduce the risk of harming uninvolved civilians during the strike, including conducting aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information,” the IDF added.

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Hamas’s figures of civilian casualties could not be independently verified.

The strike came on the heels of a similar strike on Tuesday, in which Israeli jets hit a Hamas compound inside a UNRWA school in the central Gaza area of Bureij. And on May 30, Israeli soldiers raided a UNRWA school in Rafah from where Hamas fired anti-tank rockets. Soldiers discovered tunnel shafts and rockets inside the school.

Earlier on Thursday morning, three Palestinian terrorists trying to infiltrate Israel from the Rafah area were killed in a shootout with an Israeli patrol.

At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 120 remaining hostages, more than 30 are believed dead.