Israeli military identifies more soldiers killed in Rafah attack
The Israeli military has announced the names of five more of the eight soldiers killed in an attack by Hamas fighters on a military vehicle in Rafah on Saturday.
Two of the slain soldiers were 21 years old, two were 20 years old and one was 19 years old. The five were all sergeants in the Combat Engineering Corps’ 601st Battalion. A 23-year-old deputy company commander who also died in the Rafah attack was named yesterday.
The names of the final two Israeli soldiers killed in the Hamas ambush are set to be released later today.
Israeli military announces 2 more soldiers killed in tank explosion in northern Gaza
The Israeli military announced that two more soldiers were killed in combat in northern Gaza on Saturday.
The men, a 28-year-old and a 49-year-old, both members of the 8th Reserve Armoured Brigade’s 129th Battalion, were killed when an explosive device was detonated against their tank. Two more Israeli soldiers were seriously injured in the attack and have been evacuated for treatment, according to the announcement.
A total of 10 Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza on Saturday.
IED on armoured car possible cause of high Israeli death toll in Rafah: Monitors
The al-Qassam Brigades, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the National Resistance Brigades carried out attacks against Israeli forces in the Saudi neighbourhood, in western Rafah, on Saturday using rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), war monitors Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) report.
However, the armed group affiliation of the Palestinian fighters who carried out the attack in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood that killed eight Israeli soldiers on the same day is not identified in the latest battlefield report.
The two US-based defence think tanks report that the deadly IED attack targeted a “Namer” armoured combat engineering vehicle of the Israeli military’s 401st Armoured Brigade in Tal as-Sultan.
According to the report, the vehicle was in a convoy to a captured building in Rafah, where Israeli troops were due to rest. The Namer’s armour should have protected the occupants from the blast, the monitors report, leading to the suggestion that the IED might have been planted directly on the vehicle by a Palestinian fighter.
At least one rocket was launched from the Khan Younis area of Gaza towards Israel on Saturday, the monitors reported.
Soldiers’ deaths dominate headlines in Israel
There has been blanket coverage in Israeli media of the deaths of 10 Israeli soldiers, much more coverage than that of Palestinians. It is a reminder to Israelis of how dangerous the war in Gaza is.
There are Israeli voices – often retired generals and retired military officers – complaining that too many soldiers are being killed because there isn’t an after-war plan.
Two of the 10 soldiers were killed in a tank incident in the north of Gaza. That area is supposed to have been cleared of Hamas fighters, so Israel’s military says, but it is having to back up there because Hamas is reappearing.
Israeli forces carry the coffin of Wasim Mahmud, a member of Israel’s Druze community and one of the soldiers killed a day earlier near Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, during his funeral in Beit Jann in northern Israel, Sunday
