Two soldiers killed as IDF pushes back into Gaza City’s Shejaiya
Military says dozens of gunmen killed in clashes and airstrikes in new pinpoint raid; operations also continue in Rafah in Strip’s south
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Two Israeli soldiers were killed during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, the military announced Saturday, as troops pressed on with an operation against the Hamas terror group in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood.
The slain troops were named as Staff Sgt. Yair Avitan, 20, of the Paratroopers Brigade’s 890th Battalion, from Ra’anana; and Sgt. First Class (res.) Yakir Shmuel Tatelbaum, 21, of the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion, from Ma’ale Adumim.
The soldiers were killed in separate incidents in Shejaiya on Friday, where the military launched a new pinpoint operation against Hamas a day earlier. The Israel Defense Forces said the operation, carried out by the 98th Division, came after it identified Hamas operatives regrouping in the area.
Avitan and Tatelbaum were the IDF’s first fatalities in the new Shejaiya operation.
Tatelbaum’s death came just two weeks after he eulogized his former teacher Elon Weiss, who similarly died in northern Gaza, on social media.
“I’m heartbroken. Teacher Elon, an outstanding educator whom I had the honor of knowing, so pleasant and good to his students and those around him,” Tatelbaum wrote, recalling how Weiss had calmed him down after he was in a quarrel with another student in 11th grade.
Adding that he had remembered that story earlier that week, Tatelbaum wrote: “I didn’t imagine that a few days after that nice memory, we would receive such a message. May your memory be blessed.”
The IDF first operated in Shejaiya during the initial months of the ground offensive against Hamas, announcing that it had dismantled the terror group’s local battalion there in December. It last returned to the Gaza City neighborhood in April, as the military shifted its operations in the Strip to intelligence-based targeted raids.
The soldiers’ deaths brought the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas and in operations on the Gaza border to 318. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission. A civilian Defense Ministry contractor has also been killed in the Strip.
Also over the weekend, two soldiers were seriously wounded in Shejaiya, one during a gun battle with terror operatives and the second as a result of anti-tank fire.
The IDF said Saturday that troops had killed numerous terror operatives over the past day during fighting in Shejaiya, as well as in Rafah in the Strip’s south, and in the Netzarim Corridor area of central Gaza.
In Shejaiya, the IDF said dozens of gunmen were killed in exchanges of fire with troops and airstrikes since the operation began on Thursday. It said troops located a weapons depot in a school, as well as a long-range Hamas rocket launcher adjacent to a school. Troops under the 98th Division also located Hamas observation posts, tunnel shafts, drones, and other weapons, the military said.
Meanwhile, in Rafah, the military said troops under the 162nd Division killed several operatives, while the IAF struck many sites belonging to terror groups, including tunnel shafts.
In central Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor, troops under the 99th Division killed several more operatives with machine gun fire and by directing airstrikes against them, the military said. The IDF also said that an anti-tank missile launch site previously used to attack troops was also struck in central Gaza.
A separate drone strike targeted a tunnel shaft adjacent to a rocket launch site in the northern Gaza Strip, used to launch two rockets at Sderot on Friday night, the military said. One of the rockets was intercepted while the other hit an open area.
War in Gaza erupted on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel’s south in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 37,500 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
