Hamas terrorists who invaded southern Israel during the October 7, 2023, onslaught attempted to capture a sensitive military intelligence base located some 16 kilometers from the border with the Gaza Strip.

However, the terrorists made a wrong turn upon arriving at Urim Junction and instead attacked an adjacent Home Front Command base, where eight soldiers were killed and several others were wounded, according to an Israel Defense Forces probe published Friday.

The IDF probe into the attack on Urim Base stated that the actions of soldiers and commanders who fought to defend the base ultimately foiled Hamas’s plans. However, it stated that the base’s defensive array was “not properly prepared to handle such a broad infiltration and attack scenario.”

“As a result, the terrorists carried out a killing spree inside the base until they were completely eliminated by IDF troops,” the probe said.

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. Asher Benishti — the current chief of the Home Front Command’s Southern District — covered all aspects of the fighting at the Urim base.

Urim Base, situated close to the community of the same name, is located some 16 kilometers from the border with the Gaza Strip. It is considered a “rear base,” meaning not on the frontier and thus outside the jurisdiction of the Gaza Division. Therefore, it was entirely unprepared to handle a large infiltration attack.

The base complex is split between three units: The Home Front Command’s Southern District headquarters, the 414th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit, and the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 8200. The latter, known as Yarkon Base, was Hamas’s intended target. Each base is gated off, and they manage their security independently.

The IDF said the investigators made visits to the scene and reviewed every possible source of information, including footage taken by terrorists, soldiers’ text messages, surveillance videos, the army’s radio communications, and interviews with those who fought and other survivors.

The Urim 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.

On the morning of October 7, just seven soldiers — six of them armed — were on guard duty at Urim’s Home Front Command base, though according to the base’s protocols, 12 soldiers should have been on guard duty.

In all, only 13 soldiers — a skeleton crew — were on the base at the time of the attack, as it was a holiday weekend and no major events had taken place prior to the onslaught.

Amid Hamas’s massive rocket fire and wide infiltration attack from Gaza beginning at 6:29 a.m., 10 terrorists on five motorcycles headed for the army bases at Urim.

Two female troops who were about to carry out a shift change at a guard post at the entrance to the Home Front Command base ran to a shelter due to the rocket fire, where they remained until they were rescued after the fighting concluded in the afternoon. Other troops took cover in shelters across the base.

Due to the continuous rocket fire, an officer on shift at the base’s command center instructed all guards to remain in shelters.

The district commander at the time, Col. Sagi Baruch, ordered all personnel who were on leave that weekend to head to the base to assist. Two officers who tried to reach the base were later wounded en route in exchanges of fire with terrorists.

At 7:17 a.m., a noncommissioned officer on his way in called the base’s command center and said gunfire had been heard near Ofakim, a nearby city.

Several minutes later, the NCO entered the base and headed for the command center. At the same time, the cell of terrorists reached a gate on the eastern side of the base and planted an explosive on the fence.

At 7:25 a.m., the district commander instructed the four operations sergeants at the command center to gather all troops there, assuming it was the safest place to be amid the rocket fire.

A minute later, the terrorists detonated the explosive device on the fence and breached the base. The operations sergeants at the command center spotted the infiltration on surveillance cameras and declared a terrorist infiltration.

At 7:29 a.m., several soldiers ran from a shelter outside the female troops’ barracks toward the command center. The terrorists, who had just infiltrated the base, spotted them and opened fire, killing two, Cpl. Lior Levy and Cpl. Ofir Davidian, and wounding two others.

Moments later, the terrorists headed to a shelter by the base’s armory, where one soldier was stationed. The soldier, Sgt. Itamar Ayash, exchanged fire with the terrorists before being killed.

The terrorists took cover in the armory shelter, apparently to plan their next move. Meanwhile, the 414th Unit, whose headquarters are in an adjacent base, was contacted by officers at the Home Front Command base via a WhatsApp group to assist with the infiltration. The combat intelligence collection unit launched a drone into the air to try and locate the terrorists.

At the same time, due to the rocket fire, power was cut to the base, and as a result, the electric entrance gate was disabled, later preventing backup forces from entering via the normal entrance.

At 7:39 a.m., one terrorist left the armory shelter, opened fire at one of the soldiers who had been killed earlier while running to the command center, and stole her weapon. Minutes later, the drone was able to confirm the location of the terrorists.

Ten minutes after that, four of the terrorists, including the commander of the cell, headed for the female troops’ barracks, where they torched a vehicle and tried to breach the unit’s storage warehouse.

Using the base’s PA system, one of the operations sergeants warned the terrorists to leave the base or they would be killed if they advanced any further. The terrorists then headed back to the armory shelter to devise a plan to attack the center of the base, still assuming they were in the intelligence base.

At 8:02 a.m., the terrorists fired an RPG at a building housing the command center and other offices, hitting a window of a conference room. The terrorists then advanced toward the building while opening fire at a reservist officer who had just arrived at the base. The wounded officer retreated to a gas station outside the base.

The terrorists then attempted to find a way into the command center, and one found an open door that led to it. The terrorists hurled a grenade and opened fire into the foyer, before heading inside and attempting to breach a steel blast door protecting the command center.

At 8:14 a.m., the terrorists managed to breach the steel door leading to a reception area outside the command center, and moments later, reached a second steel door that led to the war room itself. As they breached the second door, the terrorists opened fire and killed Sgt. Maj Aharon Farash, the NCO who first reported the gunfire outside the base, and who had been guarding the entrance to the command center.

A minute later, troops of the 414th Unit entered the Home Front Command base — after making a hole in the fence because the main gate was closed — and split into three teams to engage the terrorists. One team took position on a roof and led the fighting from there over the following hours.

The terrorists hurled at least two grenades into the command center. The first didn’t explode, and the second didn’t harm the soldiers taking cover inside.

The shift officer, Cpt. Alina Pravosudova, and one of the operations sergeants, Sgt. Shir Shlomo, took up a position and aimed their guns — one of which belonged to Farash — at the door to the command center.

At 8:19 a.m., the terrorists shot at surveillance cameras in the reception area, disabling them, preventing the soldiers inside the command center from understanding what they were doing. Five minutes later, the terrorists tried to storm the command center, exchanging fire with the two soldiers at the entrance.

The terrorists hurled another grenade into the room during the fighting, which exploded near critical infrastructure, causing all of the command center’s systems to shut down.

After the blast, the terrorists breached the command center, opening fire on the soldiers, killing Pravosudova, Shlomo, and a third soldier, Sgt. Danit Cohen, and wounding three others who then played dead.

The terrorists then tried to search for classified information in the command center, before leaving 10 minutes later.

Meanwhile, the district commander, Baruch, entered the base and was mistakenly fired upon by one of the teams of the 414th Unit, who thought he was a terrorist. The senior officer identified himself, and the forces joined up with him.

Two of the 414th Unit teams then identified three terrorists who had stayed behind near the armory and eliminated them.

A short while later, the deputy district commander arrived at the base and also came under fire from the same 414th Unit team, whose troops misidentified him as a terrorist. Baruch halted their fire after identifying his deputy and instructed the team to guard the entrance to the base to avoid any further friendly-fire incidents.

At 8:47 a.m., the 414th Unit on the roof spotted a terrorist near a bomb shelter close to the district commander’s office and eliminated him.

Minutes later, the 414th Unit troops spotted two terrorists at the building housing the command center and headed there to engage them. During an exchange of fire with the terrorists, one soldier, Sgt. Adi Groman, was killed, and another was wounded. Both terrorists were killed.

Fighting continued in the surrounding area for some 20 minutes, during which the 414th Unit troops killed two more terrorists near the bomb shelter outside the district commander’s office.

Reinforcements then arrived at the base, including troops of the elite Unit 5515 combat mobility force, and Tzeelim Training Base.

At 10:40 a.m., the backup forces eliminated the last two remaining terrorists who had been holed up inside the bomb shelter outside the commander’s office, ending the fighting.

The wounded soldiers in the command center were taken for medical treatment, and over the following hours, other troops who had been hiding were located. The bodies of the slain soldiers were identified and evacuated by 3 p.m.