Sgt.-Maj. (res.) Omer Moshe Gealdor was killed by a Hezbollah drone attack while fighting in southern Lebanon, the IDF announced on Tuesday. Gealdor, 30, from Jerusalem, served in the 5111 Battalion in the Golani Brigade.
He and three others were seriously wounded by a drone attack about two kilometers from the border while they were engaged in security operations on Tuesday. Of the four wounded, Gealdor succumbed to his wounds in the hospital.He is survived by his wife, Adi, and two children, three-year-old Neta and eight-month-old Alouma.Previously, he lived in Neve Tzuf in southwestern Samaria.
“Today, we pay a very painful price, and we mourn the death of the hero Omer, who left his wife and children and went to defend the people of Israel. He gave his life for all of us. The State of Israel will continue to strike its enemies in his merit until complete victory. We embrace his wife, Adi, and the entire family,” Mateh Binyamin Regional Council leader Israel Ganz said.
Five other individuals who were wounded in a combat zone in the North were brought to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed on Tuesday evening. All of them were in moderate condition.
Moreover, Hezbollah launched rockets at central Israel and the Tel Aviv corridor for the second time in under 24 hours, with rocket sirens blaring in Kfar Saba, Herzliya, Ra’anana, Netanya, Hadera, and many other towns early Tuesday.
Four people were lightly wounded by broken glass when the windows of a concrete building they were in shattered from a Hezbollah rocket.
Another civilian was lightly wounded after a Hezbollah rocket struck a residence in Karmiel near Haifa.
The IDF said Hezbollah fired around 40 rockets on northern and central Israel, spread out over a series of barrages.In addition, the military said it shot down several drones that Hezbollah launched in multiple rounds over the course of the day.
An initial IDF probe into Hezbollah’s rocket attack on the Israeli-Arab town of Shfaram on Monday found that although the woman who was killed was in a safe room, there were irregularities regarding how the room was built.
In addition, the rocket that hit the safe room was identified as a Fajr-5 rocket, a more powerful rocket than those Hezbollah would tend to use before the current war in occasional flare-ups between the sides.
The military did say it had shot down three of the four rockets fired into the area by Hezbollah.
Next, on Tuesday, the IDF provided a series of summaries about the war’s progress since early October.
IDF kills Hamas terrorists
In Gaza, the military has been in an on-and-off more intense fight with Hamas in Jabalya.
On Tuesday, the IDF said it had killed 1,300 Hamas members there in the last six weeks.
Although this is a low number in terms of progress compared to the early months of the war when the military sometimes killed several thousand Hamas terrorists in one month, it is far more than the IDF had killed over an average of six weeks since February of this year, when the war largely slowed down. This excludes a week in March at Shifa Hospital and five weeks in May and June in Rafah.
IDF Division 99 continued with smaller skirmishes in central Gaza, and the Gaza Division continued with occasional smaller fights in Rafah.
IDF struck Hezbollah targets
Over the last week, the military has struck 150 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including 60 in Dahiyeh, Hezbollah’s top organizational area in Beirut, and 11 attacks in that area since Sunday of this week.
Since the start of the September 30 invasion, the IDF has killed around 1,500 Hezbollah fighters and many more in airstrikes before that in September, as well as several hundred in the 11 months before that.
Divisions 98 and 36 are penetrating deeper into Lebanon, in some cases even five kilometers from the border, to target larger Hezbollah bases and forces that have not yet been dealt with.
Further, divisions 91 and 146 are still mopping up Hezbollah weapons and storage areas closer to the border, with less need for ongoing fighting.
Also, the military announced on Tuesday that it had killed Hezbollah’s chief of mid-range rocket fire, who himself had already replaced the original Hezbollah official in that position after Israel killed him earlier in the war.
On defense, the IDF has shot down 22 out of 27 drones launched against Israel since Thursday of last week. Unfortunately, some of the drones that have hit have caused deaths and serious injuries.
The military has also shot down most of the 400 rockets fired on it recently by Hezbollah, but again, the ones that slipped through have caused significant injuries both this week in Shfaram and Ramat Gan, as well as last week in Nahariya and elsewhere on two consecutive days.
Last week, there were also six soldiers killed and four wounded in one single incident, and soldiers are unfortunately expected to continue to be wounded or killed on a somewhat rolling basis as the invasion of southern Lebanon progresses.
UNFIL hit by rocket fire
Meanwhile, multiple UN Interim Force in Lebanon bases were hit by rocket fire on Tuesday morning and then again in the afternoon, one in the region of Ramyeh, another near Chamaa, and additional locations were hit later, UNIFIL said.
Earlier on Tuesday, a report was received that a UNIFIL post in the area of Ramyeh had been hit, causing several injuries and damage to the post.
Later, UNIFIL statements clarified that four Ghanaian peacekeepers had sustained wounds from the attack.An IDF review determined that Hezbollah fired a rocket that fell short and hit the UNIFIL post, the military said.UNIFIL largely agreed with this, saying the rocket was “fired most likely by non-state actors within Lebanon.”According to the IDF assessment, the rocket was fired from the area of Deir Aames, one of many fired by Hezbollah in a barrage launched at Israel at 9:50 a.m.
The UNIFIL West headquarters was hit by five rockets, which damaged the maintenance workshop; no peacekeepers were injured, according to UNIFIL.
During a meeting of European defense ministers on Tuesday, Italy’s Guido Crosetto said it was intolerable that Israel had bombed a UNIFIL base, according to the ANSA news agency.
“Today, there was a new attack. Three rockets fell on Chamaa. It is intolerable.”
The same base had been hit earlier in November by artillery fire.
UNIFIL troops were also harassed by small arms fire while patrolling near the village of Khirbat Silim, though no injuries were reported.