A senior official in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has expressed unusually strong criticism of the course of the war in Gaza, DPA reported, BTA reported.
Moshe Gafni is the chairman of the "Degel HaTorah" (Banner of the Torah) party and the "Ahadut HaTorah" (United Torah Judaism) bloc of ultra-Orthodox parties, part of the ruling coalition. At today's meeting of a parliamentary committee in Jerusalem, Gafni said he did not understand "what the goal is" of Israel's battle in the Gaza Strip
At the beginning of the meeting, Gaffney commented on the ceasefire between Israel and Iran and thanked US President Donald Trump for his mediation efforts. He then mentioned the seven Israeli soldiers who were killed in the Gaza Strip yesterday.
"What are we supposed to do there when soldiers are being killed all the time? I don't understand it. We need a Trump here who says “We are returning the hostages, ending this and returning to normality“.
The Israeli military said today that the seven soldiers were killed “during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip“, and another was wounded.
The military released the names of six of the dead soldiers, all of them men between the ages of 19 and 21, serving in the 605th Combat Engineer Battalion.
Citing initial information from the military, local media reported that the soldiers died in Khan Yunis after an explosive device exploded. It was placed on the armored vehicle they were traveling in by a Palestinian agent, the media also noted.
The Gaza war began after Hamas militants invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. In response, Israel launched an offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the enclave being almost razed to the ground and more than 50,000 people killed there, according to Palestinian health authorities. The IDF has lost more than 800 soldiers killed in the fighting.