Two Israeli soldiers killed in blast at booby-trapped Gaza tunnel
The Israeli military says two of its soldiers were killed and two others wounded by a booby-trapped tunnel shaft in the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Rafah.
The occupation’s army said on Sunday that Captain Noam Ravid, 23, and Staff Sergeant Yaly Seror, 20, from the Yahalom combat engineering unit, were scanning the entrance to a tunnel inside a building when they were hit by an explosion on Saturday.
Two other Israeli soldiers from the same unit were injured in the blast, one of them severely, it added.
Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime failed to achieve its declared objectives in Gaza despite killing at least 52,495 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 118,366 others.
It accepted Hamas’s longstanding negotiation terms under a Gaza ceasefire, which began on January 19.
Two months later, however, Israel unilaterally broke the truce and resumed its relentless bombing of Gaza.
More than 850 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the Gaza onslaught, including 414 in the ground offensive against the besieged Palestinian territory.
In another development on Saturday, the Israeli military said that it was sending out tens of thousands of call-up orders to reservists in preparation for expanded aggression against Gaza.
The call-up follows reports that the regime’s army presented prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with its planned staged assault, which will require substantial mobilization.
The reports prompted concern among families of the Israeli captives who are still being held in the Gaza Strip.
In a press release, the captive families’ forum warned that any escalation in the war will put the captives in immediate danger.
“It will risk the lives of our soldiers and exact a painful price from tens of thousands of reservists and their families,” it said.
Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held in Gaza, said Netanyahu is “sending soldiers into a needless war, a war he refuses to end.”
