Hamas warns Zionist regime of 'graveyard' in Gaza City as six troops killed

The Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, released a statement describing Gaza as a “costly war of attrition” and warned that the fate of Israeli captives hinges on Israel’s military moves.

Issued in Hebrew, the statement emphasized that Hamas fighters are deployed throughout neighborhoods, prepared to confront Zionist regime's forces.

The statement said Israeli captives are now scattered throughout neighborhoods in Gaza City and warned that the Al-Qassam Brigades will not guarantee their safety as long as Netanyahu remains determined to “kill them.”

On Thursday, Zionist regime's forces advanced further into northern Gaza, with tanks spotted moving along roads toward the heart of Gaza City, where residents reported disruptions to phone and internet services.

Local medical staff said at least 33 bodies, killed in Israeli airstrikes, were brought to Al-Shifa Hospital.

The Zionist regime's military announced that four soldiers were killed and three others injured earlier in the day in Rafah, southern Gaza.

According to an initial investigation, the casualties occurred when a Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb while accompanying a bulldozer clearing a route in Rafah’s Jenina neighborhood.

Separately, two Zionist troops were shot dead at a crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan by a Jordanian resident.

The man, who arrived in a truck, opened fire on troops near the border. Israel’s ambulance service confirmed that the two soldiers later died of their wounds.

Avi Ashkenazi, a military correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, openly admitted that despite the Zionist regime's military’s efforts to control Rafah, Hamas fighters remain entrenched and fiercely active within the city’s ruins.

According to Ashkenazi’s report, Israeli forces have twice claimed to take control of Rafah, a key southern Gaza city, and have reduced large parts of it to rubble.

Yet Hamas fighters continue to wage a relentless guerrilla war, turning the area into a battlefield where Israel’s military dominance is constantly challenged.

Ashkenazi detailed the intense clashes that occurred on Thursday, describing three separate firefights and a deadly roadside bomb attack targeting an Israeli military vehicle.

“Hamas fights to the last weapon and will not surrender,” he wrote. “They have adapted their tactics, transforming this conflict into a costly guerrilla war against a much larger and better-equipped army, striking at its vulnerabilities. The rhetoric of Israeli politicians claiming Hamas will surrender is empty and baseless.”

The battle for Rafah exemplifies how Hamas, despite overwhelming Israeli firepower and repeated destruction of urban infrastructure, continues to resist fiercely.

Since the outbreak of the war in October 2023, following Hamas’s surprise “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” the Israeli military has suffered devastating losses, both in personnel and morale.

Palestinian fighters have leveraged complex tunnel networks, precise ambush tactics, and carefully planned explosives to inflict heavy casualties and disrupt Israeli advances.

Their efforts have resulted in the destruction or capture of dozens of Israeli Merkava tanks, armored vehicles, drones, and sophisticated surveillance equipment.

Observers now argue that Palestinian resistance has fundamentally altered the trajectory of the war, trapping the Zionist regime's military in a costly war of attrition with no clear end in sight.