The Israeli military named eight soldiers on Wednesday who were killed fighting the Hezbollah terror organization in Southern Lebanon. “May their memories forever be a blessing,” the Israel Defense Forces stated.
The fallen soldiers are Cpts. Eitan Itzhak Oster, Harel Etinger and Itai Ariel Giat; Sgts. 1st Class Noam Barzilay, Or Mantzur and Nazaar Itkin; and Staff Sgts. Almken Terefe and Ido Broyer, per the IDF.
All eight were in their early 20s, according to Israeli media reports.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his “deepest condolences to the families of our heroes who fell today in Lebanon.”
“May God avenge them. May their memory be a blessing,” the prime minister said. “We’re in the heat of a grueling war against Iran’s axis of evil, aimed at destroying us. That will not happen because we shall stand together, and with God’s help, we shall emerge victorious together.”
“We will return our hostages in the south, return our residents in the north and ensure the eternity of Israel,” Netanyahu stated.
The eight soldiers “died in two separate firefights in Southern Lebanon—one of them an ambush near Hezbollah’s tunnels—after the Jewish state launched a limited ground invasion there this week,” the New York Post reported, citing the IDF. The Post reported that Oster, 22, was a commando in Israel’s elite Egoz Commando Unit.
“The losses reported Wednesday were the deadliest suffered by the Israeli military on the Lebanon front in a year of clashes between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group,” the Post added.
