Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, in the early hours of Saturday morning, when an armored vehicle near the Tel a-Sultan refugee camp exploded, killing the troops inside. .
The explosion occurred around 5:15 am while an engineering convoy, assigned to the Givati Brigade battalion, was heading towards a building captured by the IDF where they planned to rest after the operation that took place in the south of the Strip during the night, in which around 50 terrorists were eliminated. A large explosion occurred on the way to that building, with no gunfire reported in the area.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the explosion was “probably caused by an explosive device planted in the area or by the launch of an anti-tank missile” and underlined that “a team of experts from the Ministry of Defense and IDF will examine the armored vehicle and all the details of the accident”, trying to shed light on the dynamics of the incident.
This morning the names of six of the eight victims were released. All Soldiers served in the 601st Battalion of the Combat Engineering Corps. Inside the Namer, the IDF’s armored personnel carrier, were Sergeant Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, 21, of Beit Shemesh; Sergeant Itay Amar, 19, of Kochav Yair; Sergeant Major Stanislav Kostarev, 21, from Ashdod; Sergeant Major Orr Blumovitz, 20, of Parders Hana; Staff Sergeant Oz Yeshaia Gruber, 20, of Tal Menashe; and Captain Wassem Mahmoud, 23, from Beit Jann, who was a deputy company commander. In the next few days the names of the last two soldiers who lost their lives on Saturday will be released.
