04 January,2009 07:50 PM IST | | Xinhua
The Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement claimed to have captured two Israeli soldiers while fighting early Sunday morning, the Hamas controlled Al-Aqsa TV reported.
However, an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) spokeswoman said they would not make any comment on this capture at this moment.
In an statement Sunday, the Israeli military said about 30 of its soldiers were injured, two seriously, during the overnight ground fighting with Palestinian militants in the north of the salient.
Israel's ground operation started following eight days of intensive air strikes on the 1.5 million population of the enclave, targeting buildings, including mosques, houses and Hamas security installations.
According to the Israeli military, they have killed "dozens" of Palestinian militants, but this figure could not be independently confirmed.
Concurrent with the ground fighting, the Israel Air Force attacked over 45 targets in the Strip overnight, including tunnels, weapons storage facilities, mortar shell launching squads, and a number of mortar shell launching areas, the military statement said.
More than 460 Palestinians have so far killed and around 2,300 injured in the hundreds of Israeli air strikes.
