In a statement, he said that four soldiers serving in the Dekel Battalion were killed in the Gaza battles, one of whom was a major.
The Israeli military indicated that the officer was a company commander in the Dekel Battalion, adding that another soldier was seriously wounded during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip.
This comes despite Israel's 2024 announcement of the dismantling of the Rafah Brigade of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
For its part, the Israeli army radio reported that the four soldiers were killed by an explosive device in Rafah, noting that three others were injured in the incident, one of them critically.
She explained that the targeted force was carrying out military operations above and below buildings east of Rafah.
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She noted that the force that came under attack was traveling in a military vehicle that drove over a highly explosive device, resulting in the deaths of four soldiers inside and the injury of three others, one of whom sustained critical injuries and two who sustained moderate injuries.
Since the beginning of the genocidal war in Gaza, 908 Israeli soldiers have been killed and 6,249 wounded, according to data published by the occupation army on its website.
With Israel's military censorship of the media tight, the army faces local accusations of concealing a larger toll of its human and material losses in order to maintain morale.
With American support, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving 65,141 Palestinians dead and 165,925 injured, most of them children and women, and causing a famine that has claimed the lives of 435 Palestinians, including 147 children.
