More than a dozen Israeli soldiers were killed this weekend during fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said on Sunday. Observers see in the high death toll indications that Hamas is still offering great resistance to the Israelis, who announced yesterday that they are expanding their ground operations in the enclave.
The names of fallen soldiers are announced first on news broadcasts every hour and are prominently featured on news sites. In a small country with approximately 9 million inhabitants, almost every family knows a relative, friend or colleague who lost a relative in the war. The death of soldiers is a sensitive issue because it can undermine popular support for the war.
The 13 Israeli soldiers killed on Friday and Saturday were killed in fighting in central and southern Gaza. Four soldiers were killed when an anti-tank missile hit their vehicle, according to Israeli army radio. The others were killed in separate, sporadic fighting.
In northern Israel, another soldier was also killed in an attack by the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has been intermittently bombarding northern Israel with rockets since the outbreak of the war with Hamas.
Since the start of the war, 152 Israeli soldiers have been killed. More than 20,000 people have died on the Palestinian side. That figure makes no distinction between civilians and combatants. Israel said two days ago it had killed 8,000 Hamas fighters.
Peter van Ammelrooy
Volkskrant – On the opening pages of websites of Israeli news organizations, such as here of the newspaper Haaretz, portrait photos of fallen soldiers are shown every day next to photos of hostages in Gaza.
2023-12-25 00:00:00
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