Hamas terrorists sought to capture the Israeli military’s Gaza Division headquarters during the terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, but were pushed back by soldiers in a lengthy fight, according to an Israel Defense Forces probe published on Friday.
Four IDF soldiers were killed and seven were wounded while battling the terrorists in Re’im Base, which houses the Gaza Division, the regional unit responsible for the Strip and for protecting southern Israel. Another soldier who served at the base and his father were murdered at a junction just outside the military facility.
The investigation stated that the IDF “failed in its mission to defend the Re’im base” because the facility’s personnel were not trained to handle such an attack scenario, and the base lacked any significant defensive infrastructure.
The lack of preparations and defenses was due to the base being treated as a “rear” facility — meaning not on the frontline — despite being located just 6.5 kilometers from the Gaza border. Families were hosted on the base, and a minimal number of soldiers had weapons. The probe also stated that there were “large breaches of information security” that allowed Hamas to collect significant knowledge on the base ahead of its attack.
Still, the investigation said that “it is clearly evident that the fighting and heroism of IDF troops at the gate and throughout the base, while engaging with determination, prevented the capture of the base and a greater disaster.”
While Hamas failed to capture the base, the investigation stated that a 30-minute period during which the terrorists were “pinned down” at the entrance gate was not “utilized to carry out effective actions to prepare to thwart the raid and increase the camp’s readiness for a broad attack.”
Some 60 Hamas terrorists reached the area of Re’im Base during the attack, with 30 “isolating” the entrance junction, while the other 30 infiltrated the facility, according to the probe.
“Their goal was to strike the sector’s command and control systems and to maximize killing, destruction, and abductions within the base,” the probe said.
“As a result of the fighting by IDF troops in the base, most of the terrorists retreated,” the probe said, adding that at least 10 terrorists were eliminated by the forces in the area.
However, the fighting in the base was completely uncoordinated between the various forces trying to defend the facility against Hamas, according to the investigation. This was all while the chief of the Gaza Division was locked down in his command center, trying to manage the fighting across the entire border area.
The findings published Friday are the latest in a series of detailed investigations into some 40 battles and massacres that took place during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, when about 5,600 terrorists stormed across the border, killed some 1,200 people, and took 251 hostages into Gaza, where dozens remain captive.
The probe, carried out by Col. Itzik Elfasi, covered all aspects of the fighting at Re’im Base. The IDF said the investigators made visits to the scene and reviewed every possible source of information.
The Re’im Base probe was aimed at drawing specific operational conclusions for the military. It did not examine the wider picture of the military’s perception of Gaza and Hamas in recent years, which has been covered in separate, larger investigations into the IDF’s intelligence and defenses.
Hamas began an initial barrage of over 1,000 rockets at 6:29 a.m. — mostly aimed at Israeli army facilities, including Re’im Base. At the same time, thousands of terrorists streamed into Israel after breaching the Gaza border barrier.
At 6:36 a.m., a team of trackers from the division’s Southern Brigade set out from the base to close a gate on the highway leading to the facility. Near Gama Junction, around 1.5 kilometers northwest of the base, the trackers treated two wounded civilians. Moments later, they encountered 30 armed terrorists and exchanged fire with them. The deputy commander of the tracker unit was injured, and the team retreated to the base to warn of the approaching threat.
Meanwhile, the commander of the division’s tracker unit decided to set out from Re’im Base for Nahal Oz with several of his troops, upon receiving reports of a terrorist infiltration at the border community. As they were about to exit the base at 6:50 a.m., the soldiers found four injured civilians who said they had come under fire from terrorists on the nearby highway. The civilians were taken inside the base to shelter and told to lock the room they were in.
At 7 a.m., the division trackers left the base in a light armored vehicle, but shortly after spotted 15 motorcycles with two terrorists on each one and a pickup truck. Coming under RPG fire and gunfire, the team reentered the base, unharmed, and joined up with the Southern Brigade tracker team.
At the same time, an off-duty soldier from the base, Staff Sgt. Avraham Cohen, who was at the nearby Nova music festival, reached the base with two friends — Eliyahu Berenshtein and Osher Vaknin — and entered a bomb shelter. For unknown reasons, the three left shortly after and were later killed on another section of Route 232.
At 7:15 a.m., the trackers positioned themselves at the base’s entrance gate, as some 30 Hamas terrorists arrived. The terrorists opened fire on the forces, blocked the junction, and set up ambush spots.
The trackers engaged in an intense 30-minute battle with the terrorists, blocking them as they tried to push into the base.
At 7:35 a.m., a soldier from the base, Sgt. Osher Shmaya, and his father, Kobi Shmaya, arrived at the entrance to the base and were ambushed and killed by the terrorists. Five minutes later, a further 30 terrorists reached the base’s parking lot.
At 7:45 a.m., a terrorist who charged at the entrance gate was killed by the troops. Other terrorists were apparently wounded in this incident. But simultaneously, two terrorists breached the base’s perimeter fence near the male dorms and signaled to the other 30 to enter.
The 30 terrorists began to attack the base, hurling grenades and opening fire, close to the room where the civilians had been hiding.
One squad of terrorists infiltrated the male dorm area, where several armed troops were waiting to defend the unarmed soldiers. Cpl. Ilay Azar shot one terrorist who breached the dorms, but he was killed by another. The armed soldiers managed to kill another terrorist at the dorms, forcing the squad to retreat.
Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Sahar Zion Machlof, commander of the 481st Signals Battalion, left the base’s command center to help rescue his troops and other soldiers who were trapped in various areas in the base. At 8:45 a.m., Machlof and several other forces encountered several terrorists inside the base and exchanged fire. The battalion commander was fatally wounded during the fighting.
An Israeli Air Force drone that had carried out strikes along the Route 232 highway and near the entrance to the base earlier arrived to assist with the fighting, but did not launch any attacks inside the base due to the close proximity to troops. Instead, the drone was diverted to Nahal Oz.
At 9 a.m., the division’s chief combat engineering officer and several troops with him who took up a position in a fortified structure, killed one terrorist who approached them, and repelled two more in the area.
Ten minutes later, officers scanning near the male dorms killed one terrorist.
At 9:15 a.m., five terrorists entered the office of the division’s Northern Brigade commander, who was at the war room at the time.
At 9:30 a.m., several soldiers from the division’s combat engineering unit reached the command center and secured it with other armed troops.
At the same time, terrorists breached the base’s medical clinic and vandalized it, while 25 female surveillance soldiers were hiding in an adjacent bomb shelter. The terrorists then also vandalized the base’s synagogue, dining hall, and canteen, before heading for the sports hall.
At 9:45 a.m., 15 troops of the Israeli Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit took off from Palmachim Airbase in a Black Hawk helicopter and flew toward Re’im. At 10:18 a.m., they landed east of the base and advanced toward the command center. At the same time, another IAF helicopter struck a building where terrorists were identified.
At 11 a.m., while the Shaldag troops were scanning the base, they came under fire from the terrorists near the base’s auditorium. The troops flanked around the area, set up a sniper team on the roof of a nearby building, and engaged in heavy combat with the terrorists.
During the fighting, Shaldag officers Maj. Ido Yehoshua and Cpt. Rom Shlomi were killed, and three other troops were wounded. At least one terrorist was killed in the battle there.
Because the Hamas terrorists were believed to be hiding in the area, the commander of the Shaldag force ordered a temporary halt to the fighting and instead focused on watching over the body of one of the slain troops to prevent it from being abducted.
Around noon, a former commander of the division’s Southern Brigade and other officers arrived at the base — after the brigade commander at the time, Col. Asaf Hamami, was killed fighting in Nirim — and joined up with the Shaldag officers. By then, all the terrorists had retreated through the breach in the fence.
At 12:30 p.m., a medevac team from the IAF’s Unit 669 arrived at the base and airlifted three wounded troops and two injured civilians from the Nova party to a hospital.
Fifteen minutes later, another team of some 20 Shaldag troops reached the base, and at 1 p.m., some 50 soldiers from the elite Sayeret Matkal unit arrived. The Shaldag soldiers scanned the south of the base while the Sayeret Matkal troops searched the north.
Between 2:53 and 4:17 p.m., several helicopter strikes, directed by the Shaldag officers, were carried out against the area of the sports hall and auditorium, while the two forces cleared the area and recovered the body of the soldier killed earlier.
Later in the day, at 6 p.m., a company of soldiers from the Paratroopers Brigade’s Reconnaissance Unit arrived at the base after battling Hamas in the nearby Kibbutz Re’im. The paratroopers joined the Shaldag officers during scans, while the Sayeret Matkal troops moved to Kibbutz Be’eri.
At 7 p.m., the base was declared cleared of terrorists, and the officers went to the command center to update the then-division commander, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld.