The soldier was taken by helicopter to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba while fully conscious and his condition was reported as stable. The IDF launched an investigation of the incident.
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The incident occurred Thursday morning while Battalion 9, part of the IDF's Armored Corps 401 Brigade, was handling a Merkava 4 tank around the border with the Gaza Strip .Due to an unknown reason, one of the battalion soldiers, who are currently involved in military operation in the area, fired a machine gun placed on the tank and the ejected bullet hit the face of his peer who was standing near by.
The bullet caused damage to the soldier's jaw, but he remained conscious and received medical treatment on the field before being evacuated to the hospital. The IDF stated that the incident miraculously ended in a mild injury as the bullet hit several centimeters away from the center of the soldier's head.
The IDF is investigating how a bullet was left in the machine gun, and why the soldier who misfired the bullet didn't notice.
- A similar incident occurred last month, when a soldier was injured in his leg by a misfired bullet on Mount Hermon .He was taken to the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa in moderate condition.
Last year a Border Guard officer was killed by an instructor's misfired bullet. The incident occurred while the officer was training in a Border Guard base near Binyamin.
Ilana Curiel contributed to this article