Zionist Commandos Make First Ground Incursion in Gaza, 4 Enemy Soldiers Left Wounded.
Zionist naval commandos clashed with Palestinian resistance fighters in a raid on the coast of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, in what appeared to be the first ground assault of a six-day enemy offensive.
With aerial support from fighter jets, the Zionist force attacked a site in northern Gaza used to launch long-range rockets, a Zionist military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, said.
Militants opened fire, wounding four commandos, but the launch site was hit, he said.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, confirmed the exchange of gunfire "between our fighters and soldiers of the Zionist navy which tried to penetrate the zone of Sudanyia" in northwest Gaza.
Hamas said fighters had fired at the enemy force offshore, preventing them from landing.
Lerner said the forces had "completed their mission" and that the results of the raid "would be the first published ground activity" by naval troops in Gaza, in an offensive that Palestinian officials said has killed 165 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
Two hours after the announcement of the raid at 0100 GMT, resistance fighters fired a long-range rocket salvo, with air raid sirens sounding at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport and some city suburbs.
The Zionist military says a ground invasion of Gaza remains an option, and it has already mobilized about 20,000 reservists to do so, but most attacks have so far been from the air, hitting some 1,200 targets in the territory.
Lerner said the entity authorities would drop leaflets in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya to urge thousands of residents to evacuate ahead of planned strikes there.
The Israeli military said more than 800 rockets had been launched since its offensive began on Tuesday.
Sirens warning of incoming rockets went off throughout the night in the occupied territories, sending residents running for safe rooms and bomb shelters.
Zionist aircraft carried out a series of attacks in Gaza, including against a police headquarters and a security compound, Palestinian officials said.
