IDF soldier killed by Hamas anti-tank fire during fighting in southern Gaza
Cpt. Avraham Ben Pinchas, 24, is killed during combat in Rafah; COGAT says over 3,270 tons of flour on 218 trucks delivered to Strip in past week
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
An officer of the Israel Defense Forces was killed during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, the military said Saturday evening.
The slain soldier was named as Cpt. Avraham Ben Pinchas, 24, a platoon commander in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 46th Battalion, from Harasha, a settlement outpost in the West Bank.
According to an initial IDF probe, Ben Pinchas’s tank was hit by Hamas anti-tank fire amid operations in Rafah, fatally wounding him.
His death brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 383. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.
Also on Saturday, COGAT, the Defense Ministry body that oversees coordination in the West Bank and Gaza, announced that more than 3,270 tons of flour on 218 trucks were delivered to Gaza in the past week via Israel.
The flour was delivered to the UN’s World Food Programme operations in Gaza via two crossings from Israel, Gate 96 in the south of the Strip and the Erez West Crossing in the north, “following stringent security inspections,” said COGAT in a statement.
The statement also said that “a large-scale refueling operation was carried out this week, supplying fuel to the WFP’s bakeries using a fuel tanker,” without elaborating on the origin and transport of the fuel.
Large parts of northern Gaza have been largely been cut off from aid as the IDF operates in those areas against Hamas insurgencies. Most of the civilians there have evacuated but thousands remain under dire conditions. Israel accuses aid organizations of failing to deliver aid, saying it is allowing it to enter but that much of it is then left uncollected.
The war erupted on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The thousands of terrorists who burst into the south of the country also abducted 251 people to Gaza as hostages, of whom 96 remain in captivity, not all of them alive, along with four others held for around a decade — two civilians and two bodies of soldiers.
According to the Hamas health ministry, over 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The figure, which cannot be independently verified, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it killed some 18,000 gunmen in Gaza as of November, in addition to 1,000 inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
