Junior officers and commanders at the Home Front Command’s training base near Kibbutz Zikim in southern Israel sacrificed their lives to save more than 100 new recruits as Hamas terrorists tried to attack the facility during the October 7, 2023, onslaught, an Israel Defense Forces probe published on Sunday showed.
Six of the commanders were killed in the battle, and all but one of the young trainees emerged alive. The Hamas terrorists failed to capture the base.
The slain commanders included Maj. Adir Abudi, 23, the trainees’ company commander; Cpt. Or Moses, 22, the deputy company commander; Lt. Yannai Kaminka, a platoon commander; Lt. Adar Ben Simon, 20, another platoon commander; Staff Sgt. Eden Alon Levy, 19, a squad commander; and Staff Sgt. Omri Niv Firshtein, 20, Abudi’s driver.
Cpl. Neria Aharon Nagari, 18, who had only enlisted in August, two months before the onslaught, was killed while trying to help those wounded in the fighting.
The Zikim base was one of several IDF facilities targeted by Hamas amid the terror group’s October 7, 2023 onslaught, during which some 5,600 terrorists stormed across the border, massacred some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza.
The IDF probe highlighted the junior commanders’ bravery and quick thinking during the defense of the base amid the Hamas attack. None of the commanders, many of them women, had any significant combat experience compared to other troops deployed to the Gaza border that morning.
However, the probe also pointed to errors, including the fact that the base commander remained in his hometown of Sderot, which was also coming under attack by Hamas, and did not attempt to reach the base.
The investigation also noted that the base, which served as a training facility, was not “synchronized” with the operational army bases in the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade. (Following the October 7 attack, the base was handed over to the 162nd Division for operations in northern Gaza, and the Home Front Command now uses another facility in the West Bank for training.)
The probe, carried out by Col. Shlomi Ben Yair — now the commander of the Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue Brigade, and formerly chief of operations at the Home Front Command — covered all aspects of the fighting at the base that day.
Ben Yair and his team spent hundreds of hours investigating the battle at the Zikim base, reviewing what the IDF said was every possible source of information, including the IDF’s radio communications, surveillance cameras and the soldiers’ WhatsApp messages. Ben Yair’s team also interviewed soldiers who survived the attack.
According to the probe, 141 troops were at the base on October 7, including over 100 rookies who were drafted to the Home Front Command in August — about 70% of them were young women. There were some 20 commanders on the base, and the remaining soldiers were staff.
There were three main battle locations during the attack on the Zikim base amid the Hamas onslaught, according to the probe.
The first took place at the so-called Vav post, a fortified position on the southern edge of the base, facing the Gaza Strip.
At 6 a.m., a shift change occurred at the base, with the trainees taking up positions at the Vav post and the base’s other guard posts, including at the main entrance, an entrance facing the sea and another gate leading to the shooting range
At 6:29 a.m., Hamas launched an initial barrage of over 1,000 rockets at Israel, mostly aimed at Israeli military bases, including the Zikim base. The rocket strikes knocked out the power to the base, rendering the soldiers’ communication devices useless.
Shortly after the rocket fire began, commanders reached the Vav post and sent the young trainee who was positioned there back to the barracks.
Two Hamas terrorists approached the base’s perimeter fence and were spotted by the commanders at the Vav post, who exchanged fire with them. Another two Hamas terrorists had set themselves up on a nearby hill just outside the base, one of whom was armed with a sniper rifle.
During this battle, Abudi and Moses were killed, and five other commanders were wounded. Two of the terrorists were killed by the forces.
The second battle took place at the gate facing the sea.
The trainee at the gate was not swapped out initially, as the other commanders were focused on the fighting at the Vav post. At 7:02 a.m., a group of some 20 civilians who fled from the Zikim beach after terrorists reached the area from the sea were allowed into the base to take shelter in a bomb shelter by the gate.
Not long after, two commanders reached the seaside gate to swap out the trainee. One of the commanders took her back to the barracks, while the second remained to staff the post.
At around 8:30 a.m., some of the civilians left the bomb shelter and fled north in their cars. Some came under fire from the terrorists on the roads, but none were injured.
As the civilians left, two Hamas terrorists approached the gate, and the commander, Yariv Bibyar, opened fire, killing one and wounding the second. (The second terrorist was killed later in the day by IDF commandos scanning the area.)
The commander was hit in the helmet with two bullets during the exchange of fire, but he was unharmed.
The third battle took place at the gate leading to the shooting range.
At 6 a.m., the shooting range gate was being manned by Alon Levy and another trainee. Following the rocket fire, several commanders joined the pair, including Ben Simon, Kaminka and Firshtein.
An unknown number of terrorists terrorists opened fire on the gate from a distance. At one point, Sgt. Noa Ze’evi, one of the commanders, was hit in the eye with a bullet and was dragged back to the barracks by Firshtein. (Ze’evi, despite being critically wounded, survived.) Another commander, Sgt. Ron Ben Ezra, was hit in the helmet and slightly injured.
The commanders continued to battle the terrorists for over an hour, killing at least two of them, before, at around 8:13 a.m., the terrorists fired an RPG at the post. Ben Simon, Kaminka, Firshtein and Alon Levy were all killed.
After the four commanders were killed, two of the terrorists breached the base and split up.
One of the terrorists, who ran out of ammunition, spent over 40 minutes walking around in search of bullets to use.
The second terrorist, also after walking around for several minutes, stumbled upon the barracks where the trainees and wounded commanders were sheltering. In one of the bomb shelters, a civilian nurse, Michal Elon — who had been spending the weekend holiday at the base with her rabbi husband — was treating Ze’evi.
The second terrorist opened fire on one of the trainees he spotted in the barracks area, wounding him in the leg. After hearing the sounds of gunfire, Nagari, who was armed, opened the door to the shelter where Ze’evi was being treated in an attempt to return fire, but he was immediately shot dead by the terrorist.
The terrorist then fired a volley of bullets into the shelter, hitting Elon three times. One of the trainees, then-Pvt. Daniel Abuhatzira, whose gun had jammed, jumped on the terrorist as he entered the shelter. Abuhatzira — a martial arts expert — pushed the terrorist out of the shelter and beat him with his own gun. During the struggle, the Hamas gunman, who was unable to fire his weapon, pulled out a knife and stabbed the trainee in the head and arm.
Another trainee, then-Pvt. Ayman al-Lala, ran out of the shelter with his gun and opened fire five times on the terrorist who was being beaten by Abuhatzira, killing him.
At 9:15 a.m., several senior commanders who reached the base, along with 2nd Lt. Avichail Reuven — a paratrooper who ran from his home 12 kilometers (8 miles) away — spotted the other terrorist who had run out of ammunition. The troops opened fire on the terrorist, killing him as he tried to escape back out of the gate.
At 10:20 a.m., the wounded soldiers were taken to hospitals, and by 11:30 a.m., the bodies of the slain troops had been removed. Troops scanned the base over the following hours, and by 2:30 p.m., it was declared cleared of any threats.