New Delhi: As Israeli forces and drones continue to kill starving Palestinians waiting for aid trucks in central Gaza, seven Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers were killed in the ongoing war in Gaza on Tuesday. The soldiers, all members of the 605th Combat Engineering Battalion, were killed when their Puma armoured combat engineering vehicle (CEV) was struck by a powerful explosive device in the southern Gaza Strip’s Khan Younis area.
This comes after the Israeli forces killed at least 25 Palestinians waiting for aid, the Associated Press reported.
The IDF identified the killed soldiers as Matan Shai Yashinovski (21), Ronel Ben-Moshe (20), Niv Radia (20), Ronen Shapiro (19), Shahar Manoav (21), Maayan Baruch Pearlstein (20), and Alon Davidov (21). Their deaths bring Israel’s military death toll in the ground offensive in Gaza and along the border to 440, according to the Times of Israel report.
According to a preliminary IDF investigation, a Palestinian operative planted the bomb on the CEV while the soldiers were travelling. The resulting explosion engulfed the vehicle in flames, trapping and killing all seven soldiers despite efforts to extinguish the fire. The charred remains of the CEV were subsequently removed from Gaza.
In a separate incident in Khan Younis, two additional soldiers from the same battalion were injured by RPG fire, one sustaining serious wounds and the other minor injuries.
Defence Minister Israel Katz expressed his sorrow on X on Wednesday by writing, “Our soldiers fought heroically and fell during their mission to defend the State of Israel and return our hostages.”
Meanwhile, the Gaza health ministry claims over 56,000 deaths in the Strip, a figure that cannot be independently verified and doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel, however, reports killing roughly 20,000 combatants in battle and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October attack.
