Nahal Infantry Brigade, Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib reportedly dies after he was hit by an Anti-Tank missile fired by Hamas from Gaza

So saddened to announce stgt Omer Tabib has been shot dead.

The 21-year-old soldier was killed this morning by a direct hit on his army jeep.

Tabib was a combat soldier Staff Sgt of the Nahal Brigade he died by an Anti-Tank missile fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel.

He was taking part in security operations around the community of Netiv Ha’asara to protect it from potential infiltration attacks by terrorists from the Gaza Strip, IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman says.

IDF combat soldier Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib of the Nahal Brigade, was killed this morning by an Anti-Tank missile fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel. He was 21 years old.

May his memory be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/M3b3KXw4sP

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 12, 2021

Tabib an officer and another soldier were in a jeep inside Netiv Ha’asara, which lies on a hill overlooking the northern Gaza border when it was hit by the missile. The officer was seriously injured and the other soldier was moderately wounded.

As it was on a hill, the jeep was vulnerable to attack from anti-tank missiles, Zilberman says.

It is not immediately clear what precise type of missile was used in the attack. The military initially barred the publication of Tabib’s name until his family could be notified of his death.

Fighting between Israel and Hamas escalated Wednesday in what was the heaviest conflict since a 2014 war in Gaza.

Six were killed in Israel and at least 53 in the Strip in the most intensive aerial exchanges for years.

Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza, as Palestinian militants fired hundreds of rockets at central Israel and its south.

The fighting prompted international concern that the situation could spiral out of control.

The Israeli military boosted its presence along the border.

Authorities called on local residents to remain at home and near bomb shelters until further notice. Violent clashes between police and protesters spread through Arab cities inside Israel, with one man shot dead.

After the missile attack, terrorists in the Strip fired waves of mortar shells in the area around the Netiv Ha’asara community in the north of the Strip in an apparent effort to keep medical teams and women away. security forces. The injured were eventually transferred to the nearby Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

Doctors said the four men, three in his 20s and one in his 40s, all suffered injuries from shrapnel and the force of the blast. One of the three survivors is seriously injured and two more suffered minor injuries.

The Israel Defense Forces immediately launched a series of attacks in the area, apparently targeting the cell that fired the missile, killing at least four terrorists, according to Palestinian media. Further Israeli strikes were reported throughout northern Gaza following the anti-tank guided missile strike.

Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired more than 1,000 rockets, Israel’s military said, including hundreds in Tel Aviv , where air sirens sounded at night.

The most intense hostilities in seven years have killed at least 43 people in Gaza, two Palestinians in the West Bank and five Israelis, sparked by the weekend unrest at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque complex, which is sacred to both Muslims as well as Jews.

As world powers voiced growing alarm and the UN Security Council prepared for another emergency meeting on the bloody crisis, the UN envoy for the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, warned that “we are escalating towards a war at large. scale”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a state of emergency in the mixed Jewish-Arab Israeli city of Lod, where police said “large-scale riots broke out among some of the Arab residents.”

Civil unrest was feared to escalate when protesters waving Palestinian flags burned cars and property, clashed with Israeli police and attacked Jewish motorists in several Jewish-Arab cities across Israel.

Of the more than 1,000 rockets launched, 850 have hit Israel or been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, while the rest have crashed inside Gaza, the army said.