IDF officer injured in tunnel blast regains consciousness

An engineering corps officer who was seriously wounded Thursday night in an encounter with gunmen in the Gaza Strip regained consciousness Sunday after intense efforts by doctors to save his life and his eyesight. Second Lieutenant Ahiyah Klein was taken off a respirator and was able to interact with his surroundings.

Klein was seriously injured when soldiers operating to destroy part of a tunnel east of Khan Younis, just inside the Gaza Strip, were targeted by Hamas. Five soldiers were wounded when an explosive device planted by Hamas detonated, the IDF said in a statement.

Doctors at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba emphasized that Klein had suffered serious injuries to his eyes, and would need additional surgical procedures.

“The patient was operated on for a number of hours, and faces no danger to his life,” Dr. David Tzeiger told Channel 2 Friday. “He will have to go through operations and rehabilitation to improve his situation.”

Two weeks before the attack, Yedioth Ahronoth reporters interviewed Klein, who explained the work he did in Samur, the combat engineering unit designed to locate and destroy terrorist tunnels. “We are talking about a landscape that is hidden from us,” Klein was quoted as saying. “While Hamas knows every corner of the tunnel, we have no idea what is awaiting us inside… What happened this time will not necessarily happen next time, because we learn something new every day, and every day this war begins anew.”

Four members of the Hamas armed wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, were also killed in the clash, including three of the Islamist group’s tunnel and rocket experts, an Israeli military source said.

The soldiers were blowing up a segment of the major tunnel that was exposed in October, the IDF said. They were within 100 meters of the Kissufim checkpoint between Israel and the Strip, on the Gazan side.

The tunnel — 18 meters underground, 1.7 kilometers long and particularly wide, according to officials — started in Abbasan al-Saghira, a farming village near Khan Younis, and terminated inside Israel, about three kilometers from Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, in the western Negev.

“In its offensive actions against Israel, Hamas has breached the arrangements reached following Operation Pillar of Defense,” the IDF said in a statement Friday.

The tunnel was likely intended to facilitate a terror attack or kidnapping attempts inside Israel.

The mission to destroy the tunnel “was imperative due to the potential to utilize the terror tunnel for future attacks against Israeli civilians,” IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said. “This tunnel, similar to the one used to kill two IDF soldiers and kidnap Gilad Shalit in 2006, was built for this heinous purpose. Hamas, as the authority in the Gaza Strip, is accountable and responsible for all activities aimed at harming Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.