Israeli media reported on Saturday that nine Israeli occupation reserve soldiers sustained minor injuries overnight due to an explosive device detonation in the Shuja’iya area in northern Gaza, during a military sweep operation.

Among the injured, according to the reports, were two senior officers, the deputy commander of Division 252 and the commander of Battalion 6310.

The explosion comes just a day after the Israeli occupation military announced the killing of two soldiers and the wounding of four others in combat in the southern Gaza Strip. One of the wounded soldiers was reported to be in critical condition.

The military named one of the slain as Isai Alekem Orbach, who died in the first incident, while the critically wounded soldier belonged to the 605th Engineering Battalion under the so-called Barak Division.

The escalation follows a Thursday statement by the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, which claimed responsibility for targeting a 12-member Israeli engineering unit preparing to detonate a home near the Fida’i junction in the al-Tannour neighborhood east of Rafah, southern Gaza.

Operation 'doomed to fail'

Israeli newspaper Haaretz condemned on Friday the ongoing "Gideon's Chariots" operation in Gaza, calling it a doomed and misguided military campaign lacking both domestic and international legitimacy.

The operation, according to the paper, is built on political illusions and military objectives that are neither clear nor achievable.

Military correspondent Yaniv Kubovich reported that newly issued operational directives to Israeli army commanders ranked captive recovery at the bottom of mission priorities, which reinforces longstanding concerns that the war’s publicly stated objective, the return of captives, was never taken seriously by either the government or military leadership.

Kubovich noted that the internal list of objectives undermines recent statements by Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and military spokesperson Avi Dovrin, who publicly emphasized that freeing captives was the army’s primary mission.