IN THE COMPANY OF HEROES

Seven IDF soldiers and officers were killed in battles with terrorists in Gaza and southern Israel on Monday, as the IDF continued to consolidate its hold on areas of Gaza and destroy sections of Hamas’s terror network. Four of the Israeli soldiers were killed when their military jeep was hit with an antitank missile fired by a Gazan terrorist squad, which used a cross-border tunnel to infiltrate southern Israel on Monday morning, and three were killed in exchanges of fire in Gaza. The terrorists who entered Israel surfaced from a tunnel near Kibbutz Nir Am and were dressed in IDF uniforms. They were detected by an IDF lookout, after the army received an intelligence alert from the Shin Bet warning of an imminent attack. The first terrorist squad was hit by an air strike, but the second was able to move around in Israel and fire on an army jeep, before the IDF struck it. The following soldiers and officers were killed in the jeep: Lt.-Col. Dolev Kedar, commander of the Gefen Battalion of the IDF’s Bahad 1 officer training base. Kedar was 38 and a resident of Modi’in. Sgt. Nadav Goldmacher, 23, a soldier from the Bahad 1 training base. He was from Beersheba. Goldmacher was posthumously promoted from the rank of corporal. Sec.-Lt. Yuval Haiman, 21, a soldier from the Bahad 1 officer training Base. He was from Efrat. Haiman was posthumously promoted from the rank of sergeant. CWO Baynesian Kasahun, a 39-year-old soldier from the Northern Brigade of the Gaza Division. Three additional soldiers, all from the Golani brigade, were killed in exchanges of fire on Monday in the Gaza Strip. The IDF named them as: St.-Sgt. Tal Yifrah, 21, from Rishon Lezion. He will be laid to rest at 11 a.m. in Rishon Lezion on Tuesday. St.-Sgt. Yuval Dagan, 22, from Kfar Saba. St.-Sgt. Jordan Ben Simon, 22, from Ashkelon. Dagan was posthumously promoted from rank of sergeant. Police closed roads in Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council near the Gaza border due to the attack, and residents of Erez, Nir Am, Re’im and Ein Hashlosha were instructed to stay in their homes. IDF names soldier missing in Gaza as Oron Shaul, unknown if dead or alive. Sgt. Oron Shaul, 21, from Poriyah was named on Tuesday by the IDF as the soldier currently missing in Gaza. Shaul was in the infantry APC targeted by Hamas in an attack in Gaza on Sunday. It is unknown whether Sgt. Shaul is dead or alive and the IDF is working intensively to find answers. The announcement came after Hamas claimed to have kidnapped an Israeli soldier on Sunday, not clarifying if he was alive or dead. Abu Ubaida, the spokesman of the Hamas's armed wing, said the soldier was seized in heavy fighting on the Gaza border. He displayed a photo ID and army serial number of the man. However, no image of the soldier in their hands was presented. A spokesperson for the soldier's family, Racheli Gazit, said Tuesday that the family will continue to believe Shaul is alive until they are definitively told otherwise. "As long as the identification process hasn't finished, and there are no unequivocal findings, he is still alive in the family's eyes," she said. Hamas continues to claim that they are holding onto Oron Shaul, who was in an armored vehicle that exploded and it is still not known what happened to him after his body went missing. Following the attack, six bodies of soldiers who were on board the APC when it was hit were identified, the army said, but a seventh, Sgt. Shaul, who was also on board remains unaccounted for. In the incident, which occurred at 1:05 a.m. on Sunday morning, an APC carrying soldiers from Golani’s 13th Battalion drove over and detonated an explosive device. The IDF had previously announced on Sunday that the seven soldiers aboard the APC were killed in the incident, but their names had not been released due to problems identifying them. The families of the soldiers, however, were notified that their loved ones had been killed in the incident. In addition to Shaul, the IDF on Tuesday released the names of the six additional soldiers who were killed in the APC attack as Sgt. Max Steinberg, aged 24, from Beersheba; Stf.-Sgt. Shachar Tase, 20, from Pardesiya; Stf.-Sgt. Daniel Pomerantz, 20, Kfar Azar; Sgt. Shon Mondshine, 19, Tel Aviv; Sgt. Ben Itzhak Oanounou, 19, Ashdod; Stf.-Sgt. Oren Simcha Noah, 22, Hoshaya. All six soldiers were from the Golani Brigade and have been promoted posthumously. Two more soldiers killed in Gaza, bringing IDF fatalities up to 27. Two IDF soldiers were killed on Monday in clashes with terrorists in the Gaza Strip, the IDF announced on Tuesday morning. The number of Israeli military fatalities since the start of the ground operation stands at 27. The IDF named one of the soldiers killed on Monday as Nahal brigade soldier St.-Sgt. Oded Ben Sira, who was 22. Ben Sira was from Nir Etzion. Late Monday and early Tuesday, three soldiers were seriously injured, and four were moderately hurt, during battles in Gaza. The IDF launched a large-scale wave of air strikes in Shejaia, northeast in Gaza overnight, hitting 100 targets there in the past 24 hours, including weapons, and Hamas infrastructure sites.