Nine IDF soldiers were killed and eight soldiers were injured in three incidents in Gaza on Monday.
Six of the soldiers and most of the injured came from an explosives incident near the partly underground and partly above-ground Hamas rocket factory discovered by the IDF in al-Bureij, central Gaza.
In this incident, a truck delivered explosives to soldiers who intended to use them to explode and destroy parts of the Hamas production facility.
It is still unknown whether a technical error led to the explosion or whether some type of delayed booby trap was triggered, causing the explosion. The four IDF soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday, January 8th. (Source: IDF Spokesperson Unit)
If this was a technical error, it may simply have been because the engineers involved did not allow enough time to move away to a safe distance before the explosion they intended to trigger occurred.
There was another incident in Khan Younis in which two soldiers died, and a third incident elsewhere in which another soldier died. Advertising
The nine fallen soldiers
Four names were announced by the IDF early Tuesday morning. They were:-Sgt. Roi Tal, 19 years old, from Kfar Yehoshua, a fighter with the 94th Battalion of the Kfir Brigade, died fighting in the southern Gaza Strip.
-Maj. (res.) David Schwartz, 26, of Elazar, a fighter in the 8219th Engineer Battalion, Haci Hash Formation (551), was killed in combat in southern Gaza.
-Maj. General (Res.) Yakir Hexter, 26 years old, from Jerusalem, a fighter from Engineer Battalion 8291, Hace-Hash Formation (551), died in combat in southern Gaza.
-Maj. (retired) Gavriel Bloom, 27 years old, from Beit Shemesh, a fighter in the 36th Division's Divisional Engineer Team, died in combat in central Gaza. Five more names were released by the IDF on Tuesday afternoon, bringing the total number of soldiers killed on Tuesday to nine. (res.) Amit Moshe Shahar, 25, of Ramat Yochanan, was a soldier in the Yahalom unit of the Combat Engineering Corps and died in combat in central Gaza.
– Capt. (ret.) Denis Krokhmalov Veksler, 32, of Be'er Sheva, was a combat engineering officer in the Yahalom unit of the Combat Engineering Corps and was killed in combat in central Gaza.
– Capt. Ron Efrimi, 26, of Hod Hasharon, was a combat engineering officer in the Yahalom unit of the Combat Engineering Corps and was killed in combat in central Gaza.
– Maj. (res.) Roi Avraham Maimon, 24, of Afula, was a combat medic in the Yahalom unit of the Combat Engineering Corps and died in combat in central Gaza.
– Maj. (res.) Akiva Yasinskiy, 35, from Ramat Gan, was a soldier in Engineer Battalion 8173, “Etzioni” Brigade (6), who died in combat in central Gaza. Bloom and the five names released Tuesday afternoon all died in the same incident in Gaza.