A column of Israeli army tanks rolled back early on Tuesday morning from the eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, after an Israeli army undercover unit attempted to sweep into the neighborhood.
Local Palestinian sources said that the incurring troops clashed with a number of resistance fighters, who happened to be deployed in the area, in defense of the civilian population.
Medical sources confirmed slight injury of two fighters during few hours of gun fire trade with the Israeli army.
The wounded were medicated in the field by ambulance crews, the medics said.
Meanwhile, Israeli media sources reported that one Israeli soldier was wounded during the small-scale shootout and that the soldier was evicted to the southern Israeli hospital of Surruka.
The aL-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Hamas, claimed its fighters fired a barrage of mortar shells towards the invading forces and detonated some explosive devices in the path of the tanks.
The latest Israeli ground offensive on Gaza came after hours of Israeli military threats to carry out a large-scale ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, to undermine resistance groups and end the rule of Hamas over there.
Israeli political spectrum has recently seen a great deal of controversy over attacking the coastal region, with some Israeli ministers demanding leveling to the ground of entire Gaza neighborhoods to deter launchers of homemade shells.
Leader of the Israeli opposition, former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has downplayed what he termed ‘ Israeli army attrition operations inside Gaza’, calling for an all-out ground offensive against Gaza’s 1.5-million residents.
Over the past three months, the Israeli army has killed more than 200 Palestinians, most of them resistance fighters, including 16 in the past few days alone.
Palestinian homemade shells, in the meantime, have been causing few slight injuries among Israelis in southern Israel and leaving thousands of others in a state of panic.
The Islamist Hamas government has shunned peace talks with Israel, until the Israeli army halts all its actions including the closure of Gaza, restriction of movement in the West Bank and construction of new settlements on the occupied east Jerusalem
