Israel Pays With Blood For War On Gaza

Israel continues to sustain human and material losses while conducting operations against the Hamas Movement and other Palestinian armed factions in the Gaza Strip, all while achieving very little on the ground.

On June 15, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced that eight troops from the Combat Engineering Corps’ 601st Battalion were killed in an attack claimed by the Hamas Movement in the southern Gaza area of Rafah.

According to an inital IDF probe, the troops were killed inside a Namer armored combat engineering vehicle that came under attack by an explosive device or an anti-tank missile. There were no survivors.

Separately on the same day, the IDF said that a soldier seriously wounded earlier in the week in Rafah succumbed to his wounds.

The soldier, who was serving in the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, was wounded in a blast in a booby-trapped building on June 10, in an incident that killed four other soldiers and wounded six, including four seriously.

On June 16, the IDF announced that two reservists from the 8th Reserve Armored Brigade’s 129th Battalion were killed when their tank came under attack in northern Gaza over the weekend.

The two were killed by an explosive device detonated against their tank, an initial probe found. Two other soldiers in the tank were seriously wounded by the blast, according to the IDF.

On the same day, the IDF said that another soldier from the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit was killed in Rafah.

In the same incident, a reservist officer serving as a field interrogator with the Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 was seriously wounded, and another two soldiers were moderately hurt, according to the IDF.

These deaths brought the toll of slain Israeli troops in ground operations in Gaza and along its border to 312. More than 1,900 others have been wounded in Gaza during the same period.

Despite these losses, the IDF claimed on June 17 that it had dismantled about half of Hamas’s fighting force in Rafah, killing at least 550 fighters in the area.

On the Palestinian side, the death toll from the Israeli war reached 37,372 with more than 85,452 others wounded by June 18, according to the latest statement by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. Women and children make up most of the casualties

While the IDF is yet to achieve any of its objectives in Gaza, Israel appears to be heading towards a war with Lebanon.

Hezbollah tuned down its attacks against the IDF from June 15 in order to allow civilians in Lebanon to celebrate the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha. Still, the IDF approved operational plans for an offensive against Hezbollah on June 18.

Mirrored - South Front