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Hamas fires two rockets toward Ashkelon with both intercepted in second rocket attack in as many days; IDF troops push further in Strip, blow up former hospital being used as Hamas base.
Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Friday that Israel would annex areas of the Gaza Strip should the terror group Hamas refuse to release the remaining hostages it is still holding.
Katz’s announcement came after a weeks-long ceasefire abruptly ended on Tuesday, with Israel resuming strikes on the Strip as hostage negotiations failed to progress.
The renewed fighting has seen the military carry out waves of airstrikes that have killed Hamas leaders and targeted the terror organization’s efforts to regroup. It has also seen limited ground operations in the Strip.
The renewed fighting also saw Hamas firing rockets at Tel Aviv for the first time in months on Thursday. One of the rockets was intercepted by air defenses, while the other two struck open areas, according to the military. No injuries were caused, though several pieces of shrapnel hit areas of Rishon Lezion.
On Friday, two rockets were fired from northern Gaza toward Ashkelon. According to the Israel Defense Forces, both of the rockets were intercepted by air defenses. No immediate reports of injuries or damages surfaced.
#عاجل
إلى جميع سكان قطاع غزة المتواجدين في المنطقة المحددة في منطقة السلاطين والكرامة والعودة – هذا انذار مسبق وأخير قبل الغارة!
تعود المنظمات الإرهابية وتطلق قذائفها الصاروخية من بين المدنيين.
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) March 21, 2025
In a statement, Katz said: “If the Hamas terror organization continues to refuse to release the hostages, I instructed the IDF to capture additional areas, evacuate the population, and expand the security zone around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers, through a permanent hold of the area by Israel.
“As long as Hamas continues its refusal, it will lose more and more land that will be added to Israel,” he continued.
It was unclear if Israel would follow through on its threat to annex parts of Gaza, a move that would likely draw a massive international backlash. Israel has largely refrained from annexing areas that it has captured except for East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Both cases remain largely unrecognized by the international community.
France already expressed its opposition to Katz’s comments.
“France is opposed to any form of annexation whether it concerns the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. We have a very clear vision of the future of the region — a solution of two (Israeli and Palestinian) states living side-by-side in peace,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters in the eastern city of Dijon.
He added that Israel will use “all military and civilian pressure, including evacuation of the Gaza population south and implementing US President Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents.”
Trump controversially called for the Gazan population to be evacuated while Gaza was rebuilt into a Riviera on the Mediterranean. Arab states and the Palestinians have vociferously rejected such an idea.
Earlier on Friday, reports from Lebanon claimed that Egypt would be willing to take part in Trump’s post-war Gaza plan by temporarily absorbing some half a million Palestinians from the coastal enclave in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.
However, the Egyptian State Information Service announced that Cairo categorically and completely denied the report, saying that the country’s “position is firm in its absolute and final rejection of any attempt to displace Palestinians.”
Southern Gaza intel chief killed in strike
Also Friday, the IDF and the Shin Bet announced that the chief of Hamas’s military intelligence in the southern Gaza Strip was killed in an Israeli airstrike the day before.
Osama Tabash, according to the IDF, also served as the head of Hamas’s surveillance and targets unit, in addition to heading the southern Gaza intelligence unit.
Tabash was a veteran member of Hamas and considered a “significant source of knowledge” in the terror group, serving in many key roles, including a battalion commander in Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, the joint IDF and Shin Bet statement said.
Images from November 2018 show Osama Tabash presenting then-Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh with the pistol of Lt. Col. Mahmoud Kheir el-Din, an Israeli commando who was killed in a botched intelligence-gathering operation in Khan Younis.
Tabash was the Hamas… https://t.co/MYVpFLiFcT pic.twitter.com/RuWUeRZurZ
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) March 21, 2025
“Over the years, he was involved in terror activities and directing attacks, including a suicide bombing carried out in 2005 at the Gush Katif junction in the Gaza Strip, in which Shin Bet coordinator Oded Sharon was killed,” the statement said.
The IDF and Shin Bet said that as part of his role as intelligence chief in southern Gaza, Tabash was responsible for “formulating Hamas’s combat strategy on the ground, coordinating Hamas’s intelligence in southern Gaza, and managing their activities in the area.”
“Additionally, over the past year, he was involved in Hamas’s force build-up efforts, and worked to rebuild its military capabilities following the harm it sustained during the war,” the statement said.
The military said that the surveillance and targets unit which Tabash also headed is responsible for collecting visual intelligence to create targets for Hamas, both in Israel and in the Gaza Strip.
As such, he was “responsible for planning and coordinating targets and infiltration objectives” during the October 7 onslaught.
During the war, Tabash’s unit was involved in gathering intelligence monitoring IDF operations in Gaza, and directing attacks on troops, the military said, adding that his killing was a blow to Hamas’s “intelligence-gathering capabilities and its attempts to harm IDF troops operating in the area.”
IDF expands ground ops, demolishes hospital
The IDF said on Thursday it expanded its ground operations in the southern Gaza Strip, with troops advancing into the Shaboura camp in Rafah to destroy “terror infrastructure.”
Meanwhile, troops continued to operate on the coast in the Strip’s north and the Netzarim Corridor area of central Gaza.
In northern Gaza, the IDF said soldiers destroyed infrastructure that was used by Hamas as a command center in recent months to plan and launch attacks on troops and civilians.
In central Gaza, footage circulating on social media showed the military demolishing the former Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in the central Gaza Strip.
הריסת בית החולים הטורקי בעזה
☆יאיר אלטמן – הערוץ הרשמי☆ יחד ננצח???????? pic.twitter.com/89nHyhfzYA
— Gera. Belik (@gershon27) March 21, 2025
The IDF later confirmed it blew up the building, saying that it was being used by Hamas operatives.
In response to a query, the IDF said it carried out an airstrike on a group of Hamas operatives who were residing at the hospital, which the terror group turned into “terror infrastructure.”
“We emphasize that the targeted building has not been used as an active hospital for over a year,” the IDF adds.
The footage appeared to show a controlled demolition of the hospital, rather than an airstrike.
When the IDF was previously deployed to the Netzarim Corridor of central Gaza, it used the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital as a base of operations, according to a report by the Washington Post.
Last year, the IDF published that it had uncovered a Hamas tunnel network that passed under the hospital.
The Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) added that the IDF was working to “dismantle” Hamas infrastructure there.
“Another hospital can be added to the list — in recent months, Hamas terrorists exploited a site in northern Gaza which previously served as the ‘Turkish’ hospital as a command and control center, from which they directed and carried out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and Israel,” COGAT said, adding, “The IDF operated in response to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.”
Meanwhile, the Red Cross said Friday that fuel shortages in Gaza have rendered more than half of Palestinian Red Crescent emergency vehicles in the enclave inoperative.
Out of 53 vehicles, 23 remain operational after aid supplies into Gaza, including fuel, were halted in early March, Tommaso Della Longa of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told reporters in Geneva.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire ended on Tuesday. The number cannot be independently confirmed and does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel has said it is targeting Hamas leaders, terror infrastructure and preparations to carry out fresh attacks against Israel.
In mid-January, Israel and Hamas agreed to a hostage-ceasefire and prisoner-release deal that officially lasted 42 days, and saw the terror group release 30 living hostages and the bodies of eight slain captives, while Israel released almost 2,000 security prisoners and inmates, before the expiration of the deal’s first phase.
The deal had originally envisioned a potential second phase that would see a permanent end to the war in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages, but Israel has refused to allow any long-term settlement that would keep Hamas as the governing power in the Strip.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 48,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, but this toll also cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
The war broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251.