IDF soldier killed in Gaza fighting, another succumbs to wounds sustained on Oct. 7
Druze leader mourns Sgt. Tamer Othman, says state must ensure community held as ‘equal partners’; sister of Sgt. First Class Yona Betzalel Brief says heart ‘shattered’
An Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip while another died from wounds sustained during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, the military announced Tuesday.
The slain soldier, named as Sgt. Tamer Othman, 21, of the Kfir Brigade’s Nahshon Battalion, from Kafr Yasif was killed in battle on Tuesday, the IDF said in a statement.
His death brings Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 381. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.
Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif mourned Othman’s death in a statement, saying his community continued to pay a “heavy price” in the ongoing war, losing the best of its youth.
He urged the country’s leaders to “get up and take action,” and ensure Druze soldiers are held as “equal partners” in the country, in an apparent allusion to grievances between the community and the government, among them over the controversial 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law.
The Druze community has charged that the 2018 law that designates Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People is exclusionary and has called for it to be amended.
The military also announced Tuesday the death of Sgt. First Class Yona Betzalel Brief, 23, a combat medic with the Duvdevan commando unit, from Modiin, who had been critically wounded fighting terrorists who burst across the border on October 7.
Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during the brutal onslaught, while taking 251 hostages to Gaza and starting the ongoing war.
A service to pray for Brief’s recovery, which was meant to be held at the Western Wall Tuesday night, was canceled after the announcement.
His sister Libby wrote on Facebook that God had caught up to Brief after a year of him trying to flee his fate.
“Someone wake me up from this nightmare, my heart has been shattered into millions of pieces,” she wrote.
Modiin Mayor Haim Bibas wrote in a post that Brief “fought for his life with the same strength and determination that distinguishes him as a soldier.”
Separately on Tuesday morning, a reservist noncommissioned officer with the 8163rd Combat Engineering Battalion was seriously wounded in central Gaza, the military said.
Later on in the day, one rocket launched from the northern Gaza Strip struck an open area near Kfar Aza, the military said. There were no injuries.
Head of Hamas rocket unit killed
The IDF announced Tuesday that the head of Hamas’s East Jabalia Battalion’s rocket unit was recently killed in an airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip.
In a statement, the military said that the Israeli Air Force carried out the strike against rocket unit head Ahmed Abd Halim Abu Hussein in cooperation with the 215th Artillery Regiment, the Military Intelligence Directorate, and the Shin Bet.
It said that Abu Hussein was “responsible for planning numerous rocket and mortar launches toward Israel and IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip.
Several other Hamas operatives were killed in the attack, the IDF says, including one who “participated in the murderous massacre on October 7.”
כלי טיס של חיל האוויר תקפו במהלך סוף השבוע, בהכוונת חטיבת האש 215, אמ"ן ושב"כ, וחיסלו את המחבל אחמד עבד חלים אבו חוסין, אחראי התמ"ס של גדוד מזרח ג'באליה בארגון הטרור חמאס>> pic.twitter.com/L8gaiL6ukX
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) November 25, 2024
A separate airstrike in southern Gaza killed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist Basel Kamel Salim Nabahin, who also participated in the massacre, the IDF said Tuesday.
A recent airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who participated in the October 7 onslaught, the IDF says.
The PIJ operative is named as Basel Kamel Salim Nabahin.
Earlier today, the IDF said the commander of the rocket unit in Hamas's… pic.twitter.com/10buQNFDqq
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 25, 2024
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Tuesday that 22 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes and shelling of the Palestinian territory, including 11 killed by a strike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced civilians.
The army said it struck “Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center in Gaza City,” adding that it “was embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Al-Hurriya’ School.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the agency said 11 people were killed in overnight Israeli air strikes and shelling.
In the northern city of Jabalia, seven people were killed and several wounded in an airstrike on a residential building, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Another person was killed in a strike on a house in nearby Beit Lahia, which along with Jabalia has been the focus of a major Israeli military operation since October 6.
The attacks come amid Israel’s offensive in the northern Gaza areas of Jabilia and Beit Lahia, launched on October 6 to stop Hamas from regrouping. The military has said that tens of thousands of residents have complied with orders to evacuate the areas.
Additionally, on Tuesday, two people were killed in shelling at the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, Bassal said.
In the southern city of Rafah, an airstrike killed one person and wounded several, he added.
Amid the dire humanitarian situation in the enclave, Jordanian military planes dropped aid to northern Gaza for the first time in five months, an official source said.
Two C-130 planes belonging to the Jordanian air force dropped nearly seven tons of food and essential relief to areas the UN agencies identified as most in need and facing hunger, the source told Reuters.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Tuesday that at least 44,249 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
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.
Adding to the miseries of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, most of whom have been repeatedly displaced, heavy winter rain flooded hundreds of tents across the enclave, spoiling food and sweeping away plastic and cloth sheeting that had protected them against the elements.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said thousands of displaced people were impacted by the seasonal flooding and demanded new tents and caravans from aid donors to shield them.
