Three Israeli soldiers were killed when a booby trap exploded in a building in Rafah, Israeli media reported on Wednesday as fighting rages on in southern Gaza despite continuing calls from around the world for Israel to halt the operation immediately.
The Israeli army confirmed that three soldiers from the Nahal infantry brigade had been killed in fighting the previous day.
During the operation, Israeli soldiers went from house to house in search of weapons, the military said, without elaborating specifically on where or how they died. Local media said it was in a booby-trapped building in Rafah.
According to the army, the incident on Tuesday means that 639 Israeli service members have been killed and more than 3,600 others injured since the massacres by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas of October 7 and Israel's subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza.
In Gaza, more than 36,100 people have been killed so far by Israel, according to the Hamas-run health authority.
As the war rages on in Gaza, Saudi Arabia condemned Israel's deadly airstrikes on Rafah, a Foreign Ministry statement said.
The kingdom denounced "the continuous genocidal massacres committed by the Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian people without deterrence by continuing to target the tents of defenceless Palestinian refugees in Rafah."
Riyadh held Israel fully responsible "for what is happening in Rafah and across the occupied Palestinian territories."
It added that Israel's violations of international and humanitarian resolutions "exacerbate the magnitude of the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe experienced by the Palestinian people."
Palestinian medics on Tuesday said dozens of people died in fresh Israeli attacks on Rafah, two days after 45 people were reportedly killed in an airstrike on refugees which sparked international condemnation.
The latest attacks come in the wake of a ruling last week by the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to end the operation in Rafah immediately. Israel has so far refused to obey the ruling.
Jordan also condemned "Israeli occupation forces’ targeting of tents of displaced Palestinians in Rafah and their continuation of committing horrible war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza," according to a Foreign Ministry statement late Tuesday.
Hamas fighters also fired on an Israeli border community from the West Bank, a video released by Hamas on Wednesday showed.
Israel's Army Radio reported there were no casualties in Bat Hefer, a village located near the barrier that separates Israel and the occupied West Bank, but there was damage to property.
The attackers, who could be seen wearing Hamas headbands, came from a refugee neighbourhood in the Palestinian city of Tulkarm in the West Bank.
The Israeli army has repeatedly carried out raids in Tulkarm and other Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank.
Since the start of the Gaza war following the Hamas massacre on October 7, the situation in the West Bank has grown more tense.
According to the Ministry of Health in the West Bank, around 500 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military operations, confrontations or their own attacks since then. At the same time, Israeli settlers have also taken violent action against Palestinians.
The war is likely to continue at least until the end of the year, according to Israel's National Security Advisor.
"We can expect at least seven more months of fighting this year," Tzachi Hanegbi told the Israeli Kan channel. This is necessary to destroy the rule of the Islamist Hamas and its military capabilities, he said.
The army has defined 2024 as the "year of fighting" in its plans, he said. "We need staying power and stamina."
The border area between Egypt and the Gaza Strip has become a "smugglers’ paradise" over the past 17 years, he added, saying together with Egypt, it is necessary to ensure that there is no more arms smuggling there in future.
Egypt says a total of 1,500 tunnels in the border area have been destroyed since 2013.
Hanegbi said that the Israeli army already controls 75% of the so-called Philadelphi Corridor - a 14-kilometre-long border strip between Israel and Egypt. He assumed that Israel would gain control of the entire corridor over time.
Israel's advance into the corridor represents a further test for relations with Egypt. The two nations signed a peace treaty in 1979, establishing the corridor as a buffer zone.
Egypt threatened in January that an "occupation" of the corridor by Israel would mean a violation of the 45-year peace treaty. Egypt has also repeatedly rejected Israel's claim that it would facilitate or allow arms smuggling.
Israel is likely to maintain security control in the long term "because there are no other volunteers," Hanegbi added, though he said Israel is not seeking civilian rule in the coastal strip and hopes for a new Palestinian leadership.
For Israel, though, this would only be possible on the "day after Hamas."
The Israeli leadership continues to insist on its aim to eliminate the last battalions of Hamas.