Illustrative image.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) lost two soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip and another to a stabbing attack in the northern Israeli city of Karmiel on July 3.
The two slain in Gaza were identified as Captain Elay Elisha Lugasi, a team commander in the 7th Armored Brigade’s 75th Battalion and Captain Roy Miller, a platoon commander in the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion.
Lugasi was killed in fighting in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood. Three more soldiers of the 75th Battalion were seriously wounded in the same incident in which he was killed. An officer and a soldier of the Rotem Battalion were also seriously wounded in the same incident in which Miller was killed, the IDF said.
Their deaths brought Israel’s toll in ground operations against the Hamas Movement and other Palestinian armed factions in Gaza and along its border to 324.
Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigade, released video footage showing its fighters attacking a building occupied by Israeli troops in the Shejaiya neighborhood. Heavy clashes have been taking place there since the IDF launched an operation there last month.
Another video released by the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, showed clashes with the IDF in the southern Gaza area of Rafah.
Separately, an off-duty Israeli soldier was killed and a second was wounded in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in Karmiel on July 3. The slain soldier managed to kill the attacker before collapsing. The attacker was reportedly an Israeli citizen from the nearby Arab town of Nahf.
The slain soldier was named by the IDF as Sargent Aleksandr Iakiminskyi, a truck driver in the 188th Armored Brigade’s 71st Battalion. The second soldier also served in the 71st Battalion, according to the IDF.
It’s worth noting that 22 Israleis, including soldiers and security officers, have been killed in Israel and occupied Palestinian territories since the start of the war on Gaza last October.
Israel’s bloody war on the Strip, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 39,000 Palestinians, have clearly compromised the country’s security instead of improving it. Still, even with the lack of any achievement, the Israeli leadership appears to be determined to go on with the war.
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