Military operations a Rafah continue to exact their blood tribute among the ranks ofIdf. On the morning of Saturday 15 June, eight soldiers Israelis were killed in the explosion of their Namer armored vehicle. It was the most serious incident for the Tel Aviv army since last January.
According to what was reported by Times of Israelfor the moment only the name of one of the victims has been made public, the 23-year-old captain Wassem Mahmoud of the corps of engineers of the 601st Battalion originally from Beit Jann. The families of the other dead soldiers have been informed of the incident and their identities will be released later. As for the dynamics of what happened, they are still unclear.
According to an initial investigation by the IDF, the eight soldiers were all inside the Namer and, around 5.00 in the morning, were traveling in a convoy returning from an operation against Hamas in the north-western areas of the neighborhood of Tel Sultan, during which around fifty terrorists were killed. The vehicles were headed towards some buildings occupied by the Israeli army, where the troops were supposed to rest after the fighting. The Namer was the fifth or sixth vehicle in the convoy and, suddenly, it was involved in a powerful explosion. It has not yet been established whether the explosion was caused by a bomb placed previously along the road or if Hamas men approached the vehicle with a bomb.
The army is also considering the possibility that the explosives stored at theexternal of the Namer we contributed to the power of the explosion. Normally, they should not cause injuries to soldiers inside the vehicle in the event of a detonation. Furthermore, the armored vehicle was not stationary when the accident occurred and there was not one firefight.
This event brought the number of IDF soldiers killed in operations within and along the border of the Strip to 307. To these, we must also add Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora of the police’s elite Yaman anti-terrorism unit, who died during the June 8 raid that led to the release of four hostages, and a civilian contractor from the Ministry of Defense.
The bloodiest incident dates back to last January, when 21 soldiers they were killed following an explosion caused by RPG rocket launchers fired by Hamas, which caused the collapse of two buildings.
