Seven Israeli soldiers killed after armored vehicle hit by explosive in southern Gaza

Seven Israeli soldiers were killed during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday, after an armored vehicle they were in was hit by an explosive device.

Six of the slain soldiers are named as:

Lt. Matan Shai Yashinovski, 21, from Kfar Yona.

Staff Sgt. Ronel Ben-Moshe, 20, from Rehovot.

Staff Sgt. Niv Radia, 20, from Elyakhin.

Sgt. Ronen Shapiro, 19, from Mazkeret Batya.

Sgt. Shahar Manoav, 21, from Ashkelon.

Sgt. Maayan Baruch Pearlstein, 20, from Eshhar.

The name of the seventh soldier is expected to be released in the coming hours.

They all served with the 605th Combat Engineering Battalion.

According to an initial IDF probe, a Palestinian terror operative planted a bomb on the Puma armored combat engineering vehicle the soldiers were in while they were driving in Khan Younis.

The blast set the CEV on fire, and efforts to extinguish it were unsuccessful. All the soldiers inside perished in the blaze. The burnt remains of the CEV were later towed out of Gaza.

In a separate incident in the Khan Younis area, two soldiers of the 605th Battalion were wounded, one seriously and one lightly, by RPG fire.