The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s events as they happen. The IDF announces the deaths of two soldiers killed during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday. The slain troops are named as Staff Sgt.
Nachman Meir Haim Vaknin, 20, from Eilat and Staff Sgt. Noam Bittan, 20, from Yad Rambam. The pair served in the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit.
Vaknin and Bittan were killed and another two soldiers and an officer of the Givati reconnaissance unit were seriously wounded as a result of a blast in a booby-trapped tunnel shaft in the Rafah area. Their deaths bring the toll of slain troops in the IDF’s ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in operations on the border to 282. In a separate incident, a reservist of the 5832nd Combat Engineering Battalion was seriously wounded in Rafah after his D9 armored bulldozer was hit by an RPG.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has received White House National SecurityAdviser Jake Sullivan in the Saudi city of Dhahran, the Saudi state news agency reports. Sullivan is due to travel to Israel after his visit to Saudi Arabia, where a senior US official told The Times of Israel he and the crown prince will discuss the long-shot US effort to broker a normalization agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh. In Israel, Sullivan will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to update him on his talks in Riyadh and also discuss Israel’s planned military operation in Rafah, the US official said.
Hundreds of protes.