Jerusalem – Two days after the Islamist Hamas group announced they had captured an Israeli soldier during clashes on Sunday, Israel acknowledged on Tuesday that an Israeli soldier was missing in the Gaza Strip and presumed dead, the Soldier has been identified by the IDF as Sgt. Oron Shaul, 21, from Poriyah.
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Shaul was in the infantry APC targeted by Hamas in an attack in Gaza on Sunday.
It is unknown whether Sgt. Shaul is dead or alive and the IDF is working intensively to find answers it said.
The military believed the solider was killed along with six other troops in an attack on an armored vehicle on Sunday.
Hamas on Sunday announced it had captured an Israeli soldier, but did not say whether he was dead or alive.
Abu Ubaida, the spokesman of the Hamas’s armed wing, said on Sunday the soldier was seized in heavy fighting on the Gaza border on Sunday. He displayed a photo ID and army serial number of the man, but showed no image of him in their hands.
In addition to Shaul, the IDF on Tuesday released the names of the six additional soldiers who were killed in the APC attack as Sgt. Max Steinberg, aged 24, from Beersheba; Stf.-Sgt. Shachar Tase, 20, from Pardesiya; Stf.-Sgt. Daniel Pomerantz, 20, Kfar Azar; Sgt. Shon Mondshine, 19, Tel Aviv; Sgt. Ben Itzhak Oanounou, 19, Ashdod; Stf.-Sgt. Oren Simcha Noah, 22, Hoshaya. All six soldiers were from the Golani Brigade and have been promoted posthumously.
American satellites have now detected many more tunnels than was previously thought. Some are several stories in height and have sewage and ventilation service as well as phones. Some are too deep underground to be detected according to the US. A lieutenant colonel in the IDF who is a geologist has said that this is not an IDF issue but a science issue and that the geological knowledge is there if Israel would invest in it and deploy experts to map out the tunnels using instrumentation and algorithms. You can be sure that Hamas’s leadership is deep underground and that Israel is fighting the rank and file above-ground, not the leaders.
What does this mean?
If Israel really wants to finish Hamas off, it will take many months of planning, excavating, demolition, possibly flooding the tunnels, preventing subterranean terrorist attacks etc. If this ends soon, it means Israel did not accomplish what it set out to do.
This is bad news indeed. Nothing but bad news lately.
The posthumous promotion helps them a great deal……bibi is killing our soldiers by letting them go into that hell hole rather then carpet bombing those rats
HYD
It is disturbing that the commander of the Golan brigade which has sustained so many casualties is not even Jewish. He is Druze.