The Israeli military said it killed four armed men who emerged from a tunnel and opened fire on Israeli troops operating near Rafah in southern Gaza, an incident the army called a breach of the ceasefire. The Israel Defense Forces posted the account on X, saying no Israeli soldiers were wounded and that troops identified and neutralized the gunmen after they surfaced from underground.
Israeli media and the military highlighted the incident as evidence that armed fighters remain concealed in tunnel networks on the eastern side of Rafah, close to the Israeli-defined ceasefire line. The Israel Times reported that dozens of members of Hamas’s armed wing are believed to be trapped in underground passages beneath Rafah’s eastern sector, a legacy of the group’s long-standing use of tunnels for movement, stockpiles and cross-border attacks.
Rafah sits at the southern edge of Gaza, adjacent to Egypt, and has become a focal point for both humanitarian displacement and military contention. Tunnel complexes are a central part of Hamas’s tactical repertoire and present persistent operational and intelligence challenges for Israeli forces, who say they must act to prevent reconstitution of armed capability even while a fragile truce holds.
Israeli officials framed the clash as a clear violation of the ceasefire and pledged continued operations to locate and eliminate fighters within the tunnels. For international observers and mediators, the incident underlines the difficulty of policing underground infrastructure and verifying compliance when combatants can remain concealed beneath civilian areas.
No immediate response from Hamas was reported at the time of the Israeli statement, leaving questions about the scale and intent of the skirmish. The episode carries outsized political meaning: it can be used by both sides to justify further action, complicate negotiations over longer-term security arrangements, and influence international calls for verification and civilian protection.
Independent verification of the encounter will be hard to obtain given restrictions on access to Rafah and the opacity surrounding tunnel operations. The clash illustrates how localized incidents involving subterranean fighters can ripple into broader strategic and humanitarian dilemmas, testing the endurance of ceasefires and the ability of outside actors to prevent renewed escalation.