He Army of Israel confirmed this Saturday that eight of his soldiers died earlier during an attack of Hamas in it southern Gaza. Among the fallen, the captain and deputy commander of the 601 Engineering Battalion Wassem Mahmoud, 23, was identified, while the names of the other seven will be announced “later”, once their families have been informed.
The officers “fell during an operational activity,” the Defense Forces indicated in a statement and added that the group was traveling in a Namer armored combat car through Tal al Sultan -west of Rafah-, when it was hit by enemy missiles. The preliminary investigation indicates that the car “was hit as a result of a nearby bomb explosion”. However, it is believed that the large magnitude of the impact could have unleashed a second explosion -from the grenades that the car was carrying-, which would explain the deadly flames.
“The explosion was very significant and could have caused the initiation of the material inside the vehicle, which suffered very serious damage, as did the people who were in it. It (even) made it difficult to identify and locate the bodies“, they added and concluded that “this should not have happened, so an investigation is being carried out.”
The al-Qasam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas terrorists, claimed responsibility for the incident, which they described as an “ambush against enemy vehicles.” “Immediately after the arrival of the rescue force, we attacked a Namer troop transport vehicle with a Al Yasin 105 missile″, they specified.
This Saturday was the deadliest day for the Israeli Army since January 22, when 21 soldiers died after the collapse of two buildings in the enclave. Thus, they are already 306 the Tel Aviv soldiers who lost their lives since the start of the war, on October 7.
Without going any further, this Monday others four soldiers of the Defense Forces they died and others six were injured due to an explosion in the tunnel of a building in Rafah that they were inspecting and which the terrorists had filled with explosives. The four deceased belonged to the Givati brigade and two of them were barely 19 years old and were still in their training period.
However, the Army has not reduced the intensity of its offensives and continues to operate in several areas of the Palestinian enclave, with the aim of eradicating Hamas and recovering the hostages.
This Thursday, the Ministry of Defense confirmed the withdrawal of its troops in the northern neighborhoods of Zeitun and Will knowafter having managed – for the second time – to neutralize the operations of the pro-Iranian organization in the area, while they launched other attacks in the west and the south.
At the same time, at the diplomatic level, the Executive of Benjamin Netanyahu remains expectant about the negotiations before the new truce proposal approached Hamas through the president Joe Biden, at the end of May. Initially, the group received the text “positively” but as the days went by, they expressed their disagreement with certain aspects and asked for some modifications and guarantees.
In an attempt to pressure the counterpart and get it to give in to its demands, the United States urged the international community, the UN Security Council and other organizations to express their support and promote the plan to achieve an end to the clashes.
(With information from AFP, EFE and Europa Press)
