Thousands of people gathered at cemeteries across Israel on Tuesday to pay their respects to three IDF soldiers who were killed by a roadside bomb in northern Gaza the day before.

Staff Sgt. Lior Steinberg, Staff Sgt. Ofek Barhana, and Staff Sgt. Omer Van Gelder served in the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion, and were operating in the Jabaliya area at the time of their deaths.

The incident was the most deadly loss for the Israel Defense Forces since it renewed combat operations in Gaza after a ceasefire collapsed in March.

On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds accompanied Barhana’s family and friends to his final resting place in the Yavne Military Cemetery.

His mother Leah eulogized him through tears.

“I always said to him, ‘I’m afraid Ofek, take care of yourself,'” she recalled of the times he had headed into Gaza during the war. “He would always saym ‘don’t worry mom, I’m taking care of myself.'”

“Beloved child…it was a privilege to be your mother,” she sobbed. “We didn’t say goodbye properly.”

“I don’t know how to begin, I have no words to describe the pain,” his father Mamo said, draped in an Israeli flag. “You were only 20, the age when life begins, and you have departed from it.”

He recalled his son “standing tall with pride” and saying: “Dad, I will defend the house, the Land of Israel.”

“You told me that when you grew up, you would be a great lawyer. We won’t get to see you fulfill your dream,” he lamented.

Barhana is survived by his parents and four siblings — Oshri, Dana, Liam, and Aline.

Later in the day, hundreds of mourners accompanied Van Gelder to his final resting place in Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl military cemetery.

Van Gelder was a generous person who dreamed of becoming a doctor, his mother Tehillah said.

“Even after your death, you donated your organs,” she said.

His father Hagai said the two had “often talked about the importance of speech and medicine, and I told you that a doctor should be a person who knows how to talk to his patients.”

“We need to change the way we speak,” he said, drawing on his son’s values to make a public appeal. “I ask everyone, from the prime minister to ministers, coalition and opposition, and to protesters on both sides — let’s change the discourse, we need to learn how to use our words wisely.”

Van Gelder enlisted in the IDF just two months before the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught, and spent time deployed to multiple fronts over the past 19 months.

“Twenty-two years is not enough,” Tehillah mourned. “We talked about you getting married and going on a trip after the army and everything was cut short. The world lost a pure and innocent light today.”

Steinberg was buried in the Segula Military Cemetery in Petah Tikvah, where large crowds accompanied his parents, Orli and Anton, and his sister Shira.

“I can’t believe I’m eulogizing you,” said Steniberg’s mother Orli.

“Ever since you were a little boy, you were curious and loved to ask questions. You’ve been a great light to the world — to me, to your father and to your sister,” she continued.

“After you enlisted, you sent a letter to me that just said, ‘I love you mom.'”

When you’d come home from the army. You’d give us more hugs. I can’t believe there will be no more hugs,” she lamented. “Thank God for letting me be Lior’s mother, even if it was only for 20 years.”

Steinberg’s sister Shira also eulogized him in tears.

“My little brother, beautiful and pure. You were my only brother. I have nothing without you. I am glad that in the last year we became closer, and you told me everything,” she said.

In a video message to the families of the three Israeli soldiers who were killed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the infantrymen “did not fall in vain.”

“They fell in a uniquely just war,” he said, “a war in which we will defeat Hamas, release all our hostages and ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”

As Operation Gideon’s Chariots expands in Gaza, Netanyahu says the IDF is making “careful progress to prevent or reduce as much as possible” further troops’ deaths.

The price is heavy, he continues, promising that “we will achieve the goals of the war — all of them — without exception.”