IDF releases names of additional two soldiers killed in building collapse on Friday in Khan Younis

It was cleared for publication on Saturday: Staff Sergeant Tom Rothstein and Sergeant Ori Yonatan Cohen are the two additional soldiers who were killed in the building collapse on Friday in Khan Younis.

The incident also claimed the lives of Master Sergeant (res.) Chen Gross, 33, and Sergeant Yoav Raver, 19. In addition, five soldiers were injured – one seriously and four moderately.

Sergeant Ori Yonatan Cohen, 20 years old from Neve Yarak, a combat soldier in the Yahalom Unit of the Combat Engineering Corps, was killed in the incident.

Staff Sergeant Tom Rothstein, 23, from Ramat Gan, was a combat soldier in the Yahalom Unit of the Combat Engineering Corps.

The wounded were evacuated by helicopters shortly afterward to receive treatment in hospitals, while the recovery of the bodies from the rubble continued for many hours with the help of Home Front Command teams.

The incident in which the soldiers fell occurred during an assault by the 98th Division in northern Khan Younis, near Bani Suheila.

Maglan Unit soldiers entered a Hamas compound at 6:00 a.m. to search a building, with the objective of capturing it. According to intelligence assessments, the site included an underground route. Upon entering the building, a powerful explosive device detonated, causing part of the structure to collapse on the soldiers, who were trapped beneath the debris.

Eight soldiers have fallen in Gaza in the past week, and 424 soldiers have fallen since the start of the ground maneuver in the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, it was cleared for publication that three soldiers from the Rotem Battalion of the Givati Brigade were killed in an explosive device blast in northern Gaza: Sergeant Lior Steinberg, 20, from Petah Tikva; Sergeant Ofek Barhanna, 20, from Yavne; and Sergeant Omer Van Gelder, 22, from Ma’ale Adumim.

Master Sergeant (res.) Alon Farkas, 27, from Kabri, fell last Tuesday in battle in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip.

Liri Albag, a former hostage who knew two of the soldiers who were killed – Sergeant Ori Yonatan Cohen and Sergeant Yoav Raver – published a post in which she wrote: "Two fallen soldiers I knew in one day. They didn’t get a chance to really live – not to love, to travel, to make mistakes, to heal. They had just begun to understand who they were, and it was all over."

Albag ended the post with the words: "Know that we remember you and are always grateful to you."