An Israeli soldier was killed in northern Gaza on Saturday, marking the first combat fatality in the coastal enclave in more than three months, since the collapse of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The IDF confirmed that Warrant Officer G'haleb Sliman Alnasasra, 35, a Bedouin tracker from the southern city of Rahat, was killed in an exchange of fire near the security buffer zone along the northern Gaza border, an area the military has been expanding in recent days. Three additional soldiers—a female officer, a combat medic and another tracker—were seriously wounded in the same incident.
According to a preliminary IDF investigation, a squad of Hamas terrorists is believed to have emerged from an undiscovered tunnel shaft and opened fire with an anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), hitting a military vehicle carrying the soldiers. The terrorists then detonated an improvised explosive device, killing Alnasasra.