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24 IDF soldiers killed in Israel’s deadliest day since Oct. 7, amid mounting debate over whether war can be won
(JTA) — Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip in two separate incidents on Monday, marking the deadliest day for Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
In one incident, 19 reservists were killed when Hamas gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at two buildings, resulting in their collapse. Another rocket-propelled grenade hit a tank guarding the site, killing two soldiers. The buildings, located within half a mile from the border, were laden with mines by Israeli troops as part of a strategy to demolish Hamas sites and establish a buffer zone.
“An RPG launched by Hamas hit a residential complex where dozens of our soldiers were operating. Initial estimates suggest that the RPG triggered the explosives inside, causing a catastrophic collapse,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
The IDF announced plans to form a special investigative team to probe the incident thoroughly, with the aim of preventing similar occurrences.
In a separate incident that occurred earlier on Monday, three officers in the Paratroopers Brigade were killed and another seriously injured during a battle in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
As rescue operations at the site of the RPG attack extended for hours on Monday, a wave of rumors and unverified reports, including conjectures about missing and potentially abducted soldiers, swept across Israel.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari has since appealed for restraint and sensitivity. “Behind the rumors are families experiencing their worst hour,” he said on Tuesday morning.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Monday “one of the most difficult days” since the outbreak of the war. He said he was grieving with the families of the soldiers, “whose lives will change forever.”
The dead were all reservists, ranging from 22 to 40 and coming from all over the country, including major cities and small towns, and from both religious and secular backgrounds. One was from the Bedouin Arab city of Rahat.
News of the latest deaths has fueled an ongoing debate among Israeli citizens over the objectives of the military’s ground offensive. Three months into the ground invasion, 219 soldiers have been killed while the army has rescued only one living hostage during combat operations and has not dismantled Hamas, Israel’s two stated goals. More than 100 hostages were released late last year as part of a temporary ceasefire deal. Israeli troops mistakenly killed three hostages in another incident.
This week, a member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, Gadi Eisenkot, whose own son and nephew are among the dead soldiers, said he believed that the objectives could not be achieved.
Monday’s incident marked the second major one in which mines laid out by the IDF exploded prematurely. Earlier this month, six reservists from the Engineering Corps were killed when a tunnel rigged with mines detonated in Gaza, in an incident that the IDF said appeared not to have involved an attack by Hamas.
“These events are a major heartbreak. We love our soldiers. Each one here has his own family that now doesn’t have a father,” Gil Lewinsky, from central Israel, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I hope for the sake of the families and also for society at large that there is some accountability.”
The families of the 136 hostages still held by Hamas have become increasingly critical of the IDF’s approach, saying it endangers their loved ones, and have urged Israel’s government to instead work on securing a deal for their release via protests and a broad public campaign. On Monday, family members of several hostages interrupted a parliament meeting to demand action from lawmakers and were forcibly removed.
For the first time within Israel since the war’s start, social media and news show pundits are abuzz with people questioning the wisdom of the IDF’s strategy. Some worry that a shift to more surgical military activity, announced amid pressure from the United States to stem civilian casualties, carries increased risk for soldiers.
“The soldiers are abandoned in the field, targets are loaded with explosives and booby-trapped, all because the Air Force won’t attack if there’s the possibility of Gazan civilians in the area,” Oryan Levy told JTA.
According to an analysis by The New York Times, the pace of casualties in Gaza has slowed from more than 300 per day in late October to roughly 150 per day this week. Overall, more than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza, a mix of combatants and civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel killed some 1,200 people and took approximately 250 hostage.
Marina Bibi, a friend of one of the fallen soldiers, Sgt. Maj. (res.) Mark Kononovich, 35, told JTA that while the soldiers were in “imminent danger” at any given time in Gaza, she wasn’t sure there was another way to fight. Netanyahu described Kononovich as an “amazing man and father, salt of the earth.” Kononovich, from the central Israeli city of Herzliya, left behind a wife and three children.
A note written by Master Sgt. (res.) Elkana Vizel, 35, a squad commander from Bnei Dekalim in southern Israel who was killed on Monday, also made the rounds on social media.
“If you’re reading this, it means something happened to me. First of all, if I was kidnapped by Hamas I’m asking that you refrain from any deal releasing terrorists in exchange for my release,” Vizel, who is a rabbi, began his letter.
“Maybe I fell in battle. When a soldier falls in battle it is sad. But I ask you to be happy…We are a generation of redemption!”
He concluded his letter by noting that an injury from the 2014 war in Gaza exempted him from participating in this war. “I don’t for a second regret coming back to fight,” he wrote. “On the contrary, it was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Another viral post came from someone who had volunteered to make meals for the troops, as part of a sweeping support effort, and been assigned to the unit that suffered heavy losses on Monday.
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The post 24 IDF soldiers killed in Israel’s deadliest day since Oct. 7, amid mounting debate over whether war can be won appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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