An early morning incident Friday in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip saw four Israeli soldiers killed and five wounded, one seriously so, when they entered a reportedly booby-trapped building which collapsed down around them.
The building reportedly had explosives inside of it that caused an explosion when the troops were inside, and ultimately caused the collapse of the entire structure. It is not clear what sort of building this originally was, though after a protracted war many buildings in Gaza don’t take a great amount of sabotage to be caused to collapse.
Israel had carried out an assault against Khan Younis back in July of last year, leaving much of the area in ruins. They had claimed a tunnel was beneath one of the cemeteries that they had destroyed, though that was never conclusively proven.
Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin says that the IDF has “no choice” but to enter buildings looking for further tunnels, and that is what the soldiers were doing at the time. Defrin vowed an investigation and said they will “draw lessons” from the incident.
Two of the slain were identified as Staff Sgt. Chen Gross from the Maglan commando unit and Staff Sgt. Yoav Raver from the Yahalom combat engineering unit. The other two have not been publicly identified, though Israel says they will be at a later date.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called this a “sad and difficult day” while President Isaac Herzog said of the soldiers that they would “ensure that their names and heroism will never be forgotten.” Again, only two of the names have yet been announced.
Most of the violence in the Gaza Strip on Friday was in the north, where most of the 42 Palestinians reported killed so far on the first day of Eid al-Adha were. The US-backed aid group in Gaza, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, also announced they were halting aid operations in the strip, citing “overcrowding.”
