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“If they launch a ground war, they will be shortening the path for us to kidnap many soldiers in order to make a deal to end the bloodshed and release the detainees as happened in the past,” Fawzeh Barhoom, a Hamas spokesman, told The Daily Telegraph last Friday, referring to the 2006 kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was held in Gaza for five years before his release in 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

The prisoner swap was celebrated by Hamas however it proved to be a divisive issue in Israel, with one newspaper noting that 280 of the Palestinian prisoners released were responsible for almost 600 Israeli deaths.

On Friday, an Israeli official said the abduction marked a “very dangerous escalation of violence” and that there would be no three-day humanitarian cease-fire. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

It was not immediately clear if the possible abduction was linked to the heavy shelling in Rafah, which sent families fleeing from apartment blocks that had pillars of smoke rising from them.

“If our suspicions about today’s events are accurate, Hamas took advantage of the latest ceasefire in order to kidnap an IDF soldier,” the IDF tweeted Friday.

Backed by tank fire and airstrikes, Israeli forces pushed deep into southern Gaza on Friday in search of 2nd Lt. Goldin. The search for the missing soldier centred on the outskirts of the town of Rafah, on the Egypt-Gaza border. At least 140 Palestinians were killed Friday in Gaza, with at least 70 killed in the Rafah.