Just when doubts are growing in Israel about the course of the war in Gaza, its army announced this Tuesday the death of 24 soldiers in a single day.
It is the highest number in the three months of the invasion.
21 of them were mining two buildings for a controlled explosion, about 600 meters from the border, when Palestinian militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a tank nearby and the buildings collapsed with them inside, according to the initial investigation.
Apparently, the attack set off the explosives.
In another separate incident, three other soldiers died. “The fall of the combatants is a requirement to achieve the objectives” of a war that “will determine the future of Israel in the coming decades,” the Minister of Defense reacted in a statement. Yoav Galant, whose troops completed the siege of Khan Yunis, the main city in the south of the Strip, on Tuesday.
The incident took place on Monday, but the rescue of the bodies lasted several hours, during which they were declared missing in action.
The 21 dead soldiers who were mining the buildings are reservists, that is, Israelis between the ages of 21 and 45 who have been mobilized (about 360,000) for the war.
Tens of thousands have been returning to their homes since the beginning of the year.
The attack brings the number of soldiers killed in Israel since the beginning of the ground invasion, at the end of October, to 219. The Palestinian militiamen use typical guerrilla tactics against them, especially in urban environments: they ambush them, shoot them through the window or, as in this case, they launch rocket-propelled grenades at the armored vehicles or even come close to attaching an explosive to them and flee.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the deadly day will not cause a change of direction.
“In the name of our heroes, for the sake of our lives, we will not stop fighting until we achieve absolute victory,” he said.
The incident is similar to another of the deadliest for the army in the invasion, although due to friendly fire.
Two weeks ago, nine soldiers from the Corps of Engineers died when they were preparing to demolish a building.
The accidental firing of a tank activated the charge.
The total number of dead soldiers is, proportionally, somewhat higher than the previous war in Gaza with troops on the ground (2014), but much lower in relative terms than the 33 days of clashes with Hezbollah in 2006. Only in That period, 121 soldiers died, more than half of the number in the more than three months of war in the Strip.
The militia experienced the incident as a victory, for having faced such a militarily superior enemy.
More than a thousand Lebanese, mostly civilians, also died.
The Gaza war has not openly spread to Lebanon, but it has spread to the coast of Yemen, where the United States and the United Kingdom have bombed positions of the Houthi rebels this Monday for the second time, for harassing merchant ships linked to or directed at Israel and its allies.
According to the Pentagon, the objective of the bombings has been to destroy air defense systems, radars and an underground warehouse for the missiles launched against ships.
The Israeli army also announced this Tuesday a complete siege on Khan Yunis, the largest city in southern Gaza, to which Israel ordered the 1.1 million inhabitants of the north to move and where it is now focusing its offensive.
“Ground troops engaged in hand-to-hand combat, directed [air force] attacks, and used intelligence to coordinate fire, resulting in the elimination of dozens of terrorists,” the military said.
In the last 24 hours, 195 Palestinians have died (25,490 in total, mostly minors and women).
There, in Khan Younis, Israeli soldiers took over a hospital on Monday and maintained another fence, in their largest bombing campaign by land, sea and air in the south so far this year.
Entire families are fleeing in cars and trailers to the nearby Rafah region, where a million people are already crowded, displaced from other parts of the enclave.
The army estimates it needs several days to complete the operation in Khan Yunis.
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