Eight troops killed in Rafah explosion, in deadliest incident for IDF in 6 months
Initial probe finds armored combat engineering vehicle attacked after night of fighting; soldier wounded earlier in the week succumbs to wounds, raising ground op toll to 309
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in a blast in the southern Gaza Strip’s Rafah on Saturday morning, the military announced, in what marked the deadliest incident for the Israel Defense Forces in the enclave since January.
The slain soldiers were named as:
- Cpt. Wassem Mahmoud, 23, from Beit Jann
- Sgt. Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, 21, from Beit Shemesh
- Sgt. Itay Amar, 19, from Kochav Yair
- Staff Sgt. Stanislav Kostarev, 21, from Ashdod
- Staff Sgt. Orr Blumovitz, 20, from Pardes Hanna-Karkur
- Staff Sgt. Oz Yeshaya Gruber, 20, from Tal Menashe
- Sgt. Yakir Ya’akov Levi, from Hafetz Haim
- Sgt. Shalom Menachem, 21, from Beit El
The troops all served in the Combat Engineering Corps’ 601st Battalion. Mahmoud was a deputy company commander.
According to an initial IDF probe, the troops were all killed inside a Namer armored combat engineering vehicle (CEV). There were no survivors.
The soldiers had been driving in a convoy at around 5 a.m. on Saturday following an overnight offensive against Hamas in the northwestern areas of Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood, during which troops under the 401st Armored Brigade killed some 50 gunmen, according to the IDF.
The convoy was heading to buildings captured by the army, for the troops to rest following the overnight operation.
The Namer CEV was the fifth or sixth vehicle in the convoy, and at some point, it was hit by a major explosion.
It was not immediately clear if it was a bomb planted ahead of time or if Hamas operatives had approached the vehicle with an explosive device and directly placed it on the CEV, the probe found.
Later Saturday, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military was also investigating the possibility that the CEV was hit by an anti-tank missile.
The military was also investigating the possibility that explosives stored on the outside of the CEV contributed to the massive blast. Normally, the mines and other explosives stored on the outside of a CEV would not manage to cause injuries to troops inside if they detonated.
There was no gunfire amid the incident, and the vehicle was not at a standstill when the blast occurred, the probe found. The disabled CEV was later towed to a safe location in the Strip.
“Following this difficult incident, a team of experts of the Defense Ministry and IDF will examine the armored vehicle and all the details of the incident, until we reach findings,” Hagari said in a press conference.
Separately on Saturday, an IDF soldier seriously wounded earlier in the week in Rafah succumbed to his wounds, the military announced.
He was named as Sgt. Yair Roitman, 19, of the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, from Karnei Shomron.
Roitman was wounded in a blast in a booby-trapped building on June 10, in an incident that killed four other soldiers and wounded six others, including four seriously.
The incidents brought the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas and amid operations along the Gaza border to 309. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission. A civilian Defense Ministry contractor has also been killed in the Strip.
The deadliest incident for the IDF in Gaza occurred in January, during which 21 soldiers were killed in a blast following Hamas RPG fire that collapsed two buildings.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his “deep mourning” for the deaths of the soldiers, but insisted that “despite the heavy and staggering cost, we must stick to the goals of the war.”
He said their deaths were a “heartbreaking price in our just war of the defense of the homeland,”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also expresses condolences over the casualties, writing on X that he was “deeply saddened when, in the early hours of the morning, I received the difficult news about the death of eight IDF soldiers in the battle in Rafah.”
“The pain is great, my heart and thoughts are with their families,” he added.
Elsewhere in Rafah, the IDF said Saturday that troops of the Commando Brigade raided sites belonging to terror groups, killed several gunmen and located weapons above and below ground.
Additionally, the military said a rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip, striking an open field in the Eshkol Regional Council, and causing no injuries.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed to have launched a barrage of rockets at a military base near the community of Sufa. Sirens had sounded in Sufa and the adjacent towns of Sdei Avraham, Holit, Pri Gan, and Talmei Yosef.
On Friday night, Hamas terrorists launched five rockets at southern Israel. According to the military, the barrage was launched from the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” in the Strip.
Two of the rockets crossed the border, impacting open areas near Kibbutz Kissufim. The other three fell short in the Strip, the IDF said.
Hamas claimed to have targeted a military base in the area.
In a statement, the IDF said Hamas’s use of the humanitarian zone to launch rockets at Israel is “a further example of the cynical exploitation of humanitarian infrastructure and the civilian population as human shields by terror organizations in the Gaza Strip for their terrorist attacks.”
Also Friday night, two rockets more were launched from the Gaza Strip toward the Sderot area, setting off sirens in the Nir Am shooting range. According to the IDF, both rockets struck open areas, causing no injuries or damage.
The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
The war in Gaza erupted after the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, during which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, most of them civilians.
The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip says that more than 37,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since October 7, although this number cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, of whom Israel says it has killed some 15,000 in battle.
The IDF has also said that some 1,000 terrorists were killed inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas and destroy its military and governing capabilities to ensure it no longer poses a threat to Israel, but is also involved in indirect talks with the terror group aimed at an extended truce and the release of the 116 hostages believed to still be held by the group, dozens of whom are thought dead. Hamas has also been holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
