A civilian contractor working for the Israeli Defense Ministry succumbed to his wounds on Wednesday after being critically wounded in a mortar attack earlier this week in the southern Gaza Strip.
Liron Yitzhak, 30, from Petach Tikvah in central Israel, was pronounced dead on Wednesday morning after being critically wounded on Monday, announced the Rabin Medical Center’s Beilinson Hospital.
“Liron, of blessed memory, left behind his parents, a brother, a sister and Almog, his fiancée; she was supposed to get married in two weeks,” said the hospital, also in Petach Tikvah, in a statement cited by Israel’s Ynet news outlet.
The Defense Ministry said it “shares in the grief of the family of Liron Yitzhak, an employee of the contracting company who was critically wounded during operational activity in the Gaza Strip and died of his wounds today.”
“Yitzhak performed work on behalf of a company contracted by the Ministry of Defense, as part of assistance to the IDF forces operating in Gaza, and was hit by mortar fire,” added the statement.
In addition to Yitzhak, the mortar attack in the Rafah area of the southern Strip left eight soldiers wounded, including two seriously, and another military contractor lightly injured, the Defense Ministry said.
The IDF began what it has described as a “precise operation” in eastern Rafah on the night of May 6, taking operational control of the border crossing with Egypt and capturing the Salah a-Din road.
An Israeli soldier was killed in action in the southern Strip on Tuesday, marking the first fatality since the Rafah operation began last week.
Meanwhile, an officer of the IDF Paratroopers Brigade’s 202nd Battalion was seriously wounded during a firefight with Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip, the military stated on Wednesday evening. Another two soldiers were moderately hurt in the incident.
