Ten ‘Israeli’ Soldiers, Officers, Killed in Gaza Fighting, Deadly Ambush

By Staff, Agencies

Ten ‘Israeli’ occupation soldiers, including two senior commanders and several officers, were killed in heavy fighting in Gaza, the army admitted Wednesday, bringing the death toll in the ground invasion to 115.

Nine of the soldiers were killed in a battle in the heart of Shujaiya, one of the deadliest single encounters since troops pushed into the Strip.

The ‘Israeli’ military named those killed in the battle in Shujaiya as Col. Itzhak Ben Basat, 44, head of the ‘Golani’ Brigade’s commander’s team, from ‘Sde Ya’akov’; Lt. Col. Tomer Grinberg, 35, the commander of the ‘Golani’ Brigade’s 13th Battalion, from ‘Almog’; Maj. Roei Meldasi, 23, a company commander in the 13th Battalion, from ‘Afula’; Maj. Moshe Avram Bar On, 23, a company commander in the ‘Golani’ Brigade’s 51st Battalion, from ‘Ra’anana’; Cpt. Liel Hayo, 22, a platoon commander in the 51st Battalion, from ‘Shoham’; Sgt. Achia Daskal, 19, a soldier in the 51st Battalion, from Haifa; Sgt. Eran Aloni, 19, of the 51st Battalion, from Ofakim. Maj. Ben Shelly, 26, a squad commander in the ‘Israeli’ Air Force’s Unit 669, from Kidron; and Sgt. First Class Rom Hecht, 20, of Unit 669, from Givatayim.

Ben Basat is the most senior ‘Israeli’ officer to have been killed so far in the ground battle with Hamas.

Staff Sgt. Oriya Yaakov, 19, of the Combat Engineering Corps’ 614th Battalion, from ‘Ashkelon’, was killed in a separate incident in northern Gaza. The army said another three soldiers were seriously wounded.

The Times of ‘Israel’ was told that according to an initial investigation, on Tuesday evening infantry soldiers from the Golani Brigade, working together with armor and engineering forces, were carrying out search operations in the Kasbah, or the heart of Shujaiya, long seen as one of the most heavily fortified Hamas strongholds in northern Gaza.