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Junior officers swapped out trainees at guard posts when Hamas’s rocket fire began, exchanged fire with gunmen; only one new recruit was killed
Junior officers and commanders at the Home Front Command’s training base near Kibbutz Zikim in southern Israel sacrificed their lives to save more than 100 new recruits as Hamas terrorists tried to attack the facility during the October 7, 2023, onslaught, an Israel Defense Forces probe published on Sunday showed.
Six of the commanders were killed in the battle, and all but one of the young trainees emerged alive. The Hamas terrorists failed to capture the base.
The slain commanders included Maj.
Adir Abudi, 23, the trainees’ company commander; Cpt.
Or Moses, 22, the deputy company commander; Lt.
Yannai Kaminka, a platoon commander; Lt.
Adar Ben Simon, 20, another platoon commander; Staff Sgt.
Eden Alon Levy, 19, a squad commander; and Staff Sgt.
Omri Niv Firshtein, 20, Abudi’s driver.
Cpl.
Neria Aharon Nagari, 18, who had only enlisted in August, two months before the onslaught, was killed while trying to help those wounded in the fighting.
The Zikim base was one of several IDF facilities targeted by Hamas amid the terror group’s October 7, 2023 onslaught, during which some 5,600 terrorists stormed across the border, massacred some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza.
The IDF probe highlighted the junior commanders’ bravery and quick thinking during the defense of the base amid the Hamas attack. None of the commanders, many of them women, had any significant combat experience compared to other troops deployed to the Gaza border that morning.