The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday released details of its initial probe of a deadly blast in the central Gaza Strip a day prior, in which six combat engineers were killed and several others were wounded.
The reservists were killed when explosives intended for demolishing a Hamas tunnel in Bureij detonated prematurely.
According to the IDF’s initial probe of the blast, the early explosion of the tunnel system was caused by a tank shelling.
Combat engineers had been preparing the tunnel for demolition, rigging the underground passages with explosives.
Half an hour before the detonation was supposed to be carried out, a tank stationed near the detonating cord fired shells at a nearby building after identifying suspicious movement.
According to the probe, one of the shells hit an electricity pole, and the blast somehow activated the detonating cord, leading to the premature massive explosion of the tunnel system while the combat engineers were still working on preparing it for demolition.
Further details surrounding the circumstances of how the tank shelling set off the detonator cord were still under investigation.
The six fatalities were named as Sgt. First Class (res.) Gavriel Bloom, 27, from Beit Shemesh; Master Sgt. (res.) Amit Moshe Shahar, 25, from Ramat Yohanan; Cpt. (res.) Denis Krokhmalov Veksler, 32, from Beersheba; Cpt. (res.) Ron Efrimi, 26, from Hod Hasharon; Master Sgt. (res.) Roi Avraham Maimon, 24, a paramedic from Afula; and Sgt. Maj. (res.) Akiva Yasinskiy, 35, from Ramat Gan.
Several others were injured, some seriously, in the explosion.
Among those hurt in the incident was entertainer Idan Amedi, a popular singer and actor on the hit TV show “Fauda,” who was airlifted to a hospital Monday and was not in life-threatening danger, his father said.
The blast occurred close to where officers were leading reporters on a tour of a Hamas rocket manufacturing plant.
A Times of Israel correspondent reported hearing and seeing a large blast rip through the air, capturing the moment in a photo.
As the IDF began to escort the reporters out of the Strip, medical dispatches were heard over the radio, with commanders declaring a mass casualty incident.
Three other soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip on Monday, raising the toll in Israel’s ground offensive against Hamas to 185.
Israel launched its offensive after thousands of Hamas terrorists stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 240 victims hostage, over half of whom remain in captivity in Gaza.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says over 23,000 people have been killed in the fighting, though these figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 8,500 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.