Israel’s military has admitted that it has “not defeated” all four Hamas battalions active in the central Gaza Strip, and Israeli forces sustained casualties on Wednesday in at least three attacks launched by Palestinian fighters in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City in the north of the territory.

US-based think tanks, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Critical Threats Project (CTP), also reported that Palestinian fighters targeted Israeli infantry and armour in Zeitoun with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and “explosively-formed penetrators”.

In southern Khan Younis, fighting continues to rage with Palestinian fighters ambushing Israeli special forces and soldiers and attacking with thermobaric rockets, RPGs and small arms, according to the latest ISW/CTP battlefield report.

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Fact check: 40 Israeli babies beheaded by Hamas fighters?

Last year, a news heavily circulated on social media platforms Meta, X, TikTok and Snapchat that Hamas fighters’ beheaded Israel’s 40 babies. The unverified claim was retweeted and did help to promote the propaganda on false news or at least this has not been verified yet by any news outlet.

Bel Trew, war correspondent who broke the news on Twitter, also took back her claim and gave the following clarification: “I just wanted to clarify that I did not tweet 40 babies had been beheaded. I tweeted that foreign media had been told women and children had been decapitated but we had not been shown bodies - which was my response to reports which had gone viral about the 40 babies. I realised the way my tweet was written was too short to explain the full context, so deleted it. My headline of my story references that toddlers were killed.”

Hamas denied claims its fighters targeted civilians during Saturday’s attack in Israel that left hundreds dead.

“Give us one picture that Hamas killed civilians, that Hamas killed children, that Hamas killed women. We don’t kill civilians,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, told Arab based media organization.

The White House also walked back comments from US President Joe Biden that he had "seen" images of babies decapitated by Hamas.

On Wednesday, the White House was also forced to backtrack on a claim by US President Joe Biden that he has seen pictures of Hamas fighters beheading children in southern Israel.