The IDF on Saturday evening identified two additional soldiers killed in Friday’s deadly building collapse in the southern Gaza town of Bani Suheila, near Khan Younis.
Sergeant First Class Tom Rotstein, 23, of Ramat Gan, and Sergeant Uri Yhonatan Cohen, 20, of Neve Yarak—both from the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit—were killed alongside two others in the incident.
The collapse also claimed the lives of Sgt. Major (res.) Chen Gross, 33, from Magen Yossef, a reservist in the elite Maglan unit under the Commando Brigade, and Staff Sgt. Yoav Raver, 19, of Sde Warburg, also of Yahalom. Five additional soldiers were wounded in the incident, including a Maglan reserve officer who was seriously injured. The others sustained moderate wounds.
According to preliminary findings under military review and accounts obtained by Israeli media, the structure was not a weakened or previously damaged building—contrary to initial reports—but rather one considered relatively stable compared to others in the area.
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The incident occurred at 6:10 a.m. during a 98th Division ground assault on a fortified Hamas compound, which included a tunnel system. The target was in a neighborhood the military had declared cleared of Hamas control more than a year ago.
The IDF said the force entered the building as part of a clearing operation, using preparatory fire and tank cover as standard procedure. Wounded troops were evacuated to hospitals in Israel, while military teams worked for hours to retrieve the four fallen soldiers from the rubble.
An internal investigation is now examining why available tools and resources were not deployed in time to thoroughly scan the structure’s interior in advance to detect potential explosives. The building was part of a Hamas subterranean complex.
Although the IDF has not conducted ground operations in Bani Suheila over the past year, and had previously declared the local Hamas battalion dismantled, terrorists appear to have reestablished a presence in the area—just outside the new Israeli security buffer zone in Gaza.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Friday ordered a tightening of operational procedures following the deadly collapse in Bani Suheila, emphasizing a key directive for all forces operating in Gaza: advance as slowly as necessary to ensure troop safety and prevent further casualties.
This approach reflects the political leadership's guidance to the military—even at the cost of a prolonged ground operation that could stretch for many more months or even years.
The slower pace, while allowing many terrorists to escape, also reveals a reality the IDF has long warned of: Hamas still maintains more than 10,000 armed fighters and a vast underground network, much of which remains undiscovered or intact.
Although the army declared last year that it had dismantled the Hamas battalion in Bani Suheila, the military’s own criteria for such a declaration involve degrading about 60–70% of a battalion’s capabilities—such as tunnels and weapons—not necessarily neutralizing most of its operatives. Many fighters escaped IDF fire and have since reestablished positions in the neighborhood.
Another pressing concern facing Israeli forces is the challenge of safely entering buildings damaged during previous operations. These buildings pose a serious risk of collapse during entry and are often booby-trapped.
Hamas, anticipating renewed ground assaults, has rigged hundreds of weakened buildings across Gaza with thousands of explosive devices. While Israeli troops typically strike these buildings from the outside or scan them with drones and K-9 units, they are sometimes forced to preserve the buildings to locate tunnel shafts that lead to Hamas’ underground tunnel network, which has yet to be fully mapped or destroyed.
“We have established the principle that security takes precedence over speed,” IDF officials said Friday night, addressing the difficult tactical decisions facing commanders in Gaza.
Referring to a previous incident in which three Givati Brigade soldiers were killed earlier this week, officials noted that a terrorist had emerged from a tunnel shaft to plant an explosive in a nearby building that had already been hit in an airstrike. The rubble, they said, ultimately gave the terrorist an advantage—he crawled through the debris, concealed by fallen beams, placed the explosive device and escaped under cover of the rubble.
The military acknowledged that the goal of the joint Maglan and Yahalom operation in Bani Suheila—where four soldiers were killed on Friday—was to secure and hold ground in a strategic area, preceded by efforts to locate and destroy terror infrastructure.
Eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza over the past week—the highest weekly toll since early January. As of Saturday, the total number of Israeli military fatalities since the war began on October 7, 2023, stands at 866.