The names of the fallen soldiers, four fighters from the Netzach Yehuda Battalion and one fighter from the Northern Brigade, were cleared for publication: Staff sergeant Meir Shimon Amar, 20, from Jerusalem; Sergeant Moshe Nissim Frech, 20, from Jerusalem; Staff Sergeant Noam Aharon Musgadian, 20, from Jerusalem; Staff sergeant Moshe Shmuel Noll; and Sergeant First Class (res.) Benyamin Asulin , 28, from Haifa. Fourteen additional fighters were wounded in the incident – two seriously, six moderately and six lightly. They were evacuated to hospitals and their families were notified.

Incident details

The fighters were struck when their unit was carrying out an offensive operation in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. The soldiers were ambushed by an array of improvised explosive devices while operating in the area, and Northern Brigade forces were rushed to evacuate the wounded from the field. During the evacuation attempt, fire was opened toward the forces, wounding some of the fighters. The IDF continues to investigate the details of the incident.

The Netzach Yehuda battalion, which is a special unit that is tailored for the needs of religious conscripts, stated, "With a broken and tearful heart, we join in the mourning of the families over the death of their sons, brave fighters who risked their lives and sanctified God's name for the People of Israel. The Netzach Yehuda Battalion entered the maneuver a few days ago for another round in a battalion combat team to fight in northern Gaza Strip."

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In a rare glimpse into one of Israel's most clandestine military units, photographer Oren Cohen spent two years documenting the Israeli Navy's Underwater Missions Unit (Yalt'am). His unprecedented access, both before and after the October 7 attacks, offers a unique look at the specialized divers who protect Israel's maritime borders, perform complex rescue operations, and neutralize underwater threats. Despite its critical role in national security, this unit remains largely unknown to the public, especially since October 7.

"We deal with what could be called professional diving," explains Lt. Col. Oron Inbar (47), the unit's commander for the past five years, who completed his service this week after nearly three decades in the military. "Professional diving is a complex field, very different from combat diving performed by Shayetet 13 (Israel's naval special forces). Our diving can be both shallow and very deep, with unit members diving to depths of 300 feet. We also have robotic equipment that can reach depths between 330 and 980 feet, which has been crucial during the current conflict."

When asked about missions since October 7, Inbar elaborates: "We mobilized very quickly when the war broke out, preparing for all scenarios, and were operational within hours. Since then, we've been doing what we do best in both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Our core wartime missions have involved neutralizing and removing or locating and removing devices we've found along the southern coast, for instance, after attempted sea infiltrations. In the southern sector, we've located and removed a lot of weaponry. We've also located and removed unmanned underwater vehicles, along with other missions involving detection and mapping, often in cooperation with Shayetet 13 and Yahalom (the IDF's elite combat engineering unit).

The Yalt'am unit also has offensive capabilities, which have been utilized in recent fighting. "We also engage in offensive missions," Inbar explains, "but routinely, we deal more with things the enemy prepares for us and causes us to handle, mainly detection, removal, neutralization, and destruction underwater."

At the start of the war, missions were truly around the clock, and even now, it's fair to say there's a lot of high-intensity activity. We're carrying out complex operations in the maritime arena, mainly in the southern sector, but also in the north."

Lt. Col. Oron Inbar, the outgoing Yalt'am commander, is 47, married with three children, and lives on the Kfar HaMaccabi kibbutz. "My love for water and handiwork began in childhood, and the combination always fascinated me," he recounts. "My father was a Shayetet 13 warrior, and I enlisted in 1997 for the naval officer course. I served on ships and as a commander in the naval officer course, then joined Yalt'am, which I've commanded since summer 2019 until this week, for five years."

Yalt'am marks Israeli holidays and special occasions in a unique way underwater, from raising national flags on Independence Day to lighting Hanukkah candles using underwater welding equipment. Yalt'am is one of the finest examples of women's integration in the IDF. "We've been a mixed-gender unit for over 20 years, and for us, it's the most natural thing in the world, a non-issue," Inbar reports.

One of Yalt'am's most crucial and important activities is rescue and recovery in all of Israel's aquatic and underwater areas, including the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Sea of Galilee, rivers, and more. Over the years, the unit has participated in numerous missions to locate missing persons. Tragically, in many cases, this has also involved recovering bodies from the water.

Unit members play a vital role in rescue operations following military accidents, often working in collaboration with Unit 669 combat rescue forces. "Once it becomes an underwater incident, we lead it," Inbar explains, "both in rescue and in collecting and extracting parts of crashed helicopters – for example, for accident investigations."

In many cases, Yalt'am works on civilian incidents in cooperation with the police. "It happens quite often that innocent civilians swimming in the sea or various bodies of water spot something – for example, different types of ordnance, weapon parts, or bombs," says Inbar. "The civilians call the police, and they call us. These parts end up in the water, among other reasons, as remnants of criminal incidents."

Another unique Yalt'am specialization, even at the national level, is explosives handling – for example, removing bombs and weaponry found underwater, dealing with improvised explosive devices. "It's similar to what the Yahalom unit of the Combat Engineering Corps does," says Inbar, "and we cooperate with them."

"We perform any task or job you can imagine above water and underwater, and often the underwater execution is much more complex and dangerous," Inbar explains. "We deal with underwater engineering, treating and rehabilitating infrastructure, systems, structures, and vessels, underwater welding and cutting, and more."

Yalt'am is composed of two combat companies and one logistical-technical company. All fighters undergo a year-long training in professional diving. The explosives experts undergo training with a special engineering unit of the ground forces, followed by training for underwater explosives handling.

As providers of professional support and backup for certain cases that can occur far from shore, Yalt'am fighters often join patrols of missile boats and submarines far from Israel's shores.

Yalt'am, established under its current name in 1980, has a glorious history of participation in special operations and Israel's wars. Among other missions, unit fighters took part in Operation Spring of Youth, crossing the Suez Canal and rescuing wounded soldiers during the Yom Kippur War.

The Yalt'am insignia features an octopus, symbolizing the unit's versatility in tackling diverse underwater challenges and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances during complex missions.

In an emotional ceremony attended by Haifa Naval Base Commander Brigadier General Eli Socholitzky, outgoing Yalt'am Commander Oron Inbar completed his role and was replaced by Lt. Col. Matan Bar. The veteran divers of Yalt'am also came to salute.

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Iranian diplomat Assadolah Assadi and three other people were due to go on trial in Belgium on Friday for allegedly planning a terrorist attack that would have targeted an Iranian opposition march in Paris in 2018 organized by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

An Iranian-Belgian couple, Amir Saadouni and Nasimeh Naami, were arrested and found to be in possession of half a kilogram (approximately one pound) of explosives. Another suspect, poet Mehrdad Arefani, who has lived in Belgium for over a decade, was arrested in France in 2018 on a European warrant.

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On June 30, 2018, Belgian police officers tipped off about a possible attack against the annual meeting of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, stopped the couple's Mercedes car. In their luggage, they found 550 grams of the unstable TATP explosive and a detonator. In its report, Belgium's bomb disposal unit said the device was of professional quality.

TATP has been used in several attacks in Europe in recent years, including in 2016 when suicide bombers killed 32 people on the Brussels subway and at an airport. It could have caused a sizable explosion and panic in the crowd, estimated at 25,000 people, that had gathered that day in the French town of Villepinte, north of Paris.

Assadi, who had been posted in Vienna, was captured in Germany, where he did not have diplomatic immunity.

According to legal documents from the two-year investigation obtained by The Associated Press, Belgium's intelligence and security agency (VSSE) says Assadi operated on orders from Iran's authorities and brought the explosives to Europe himself.

The French government claimed that Iran's intelligence service was behind the planned attack. All four suspects were charged with planning a terrorist attack and membership in a terrorist organization. If they are found guilty, they could face life sentences.

Tehran has repeatedly dismissed the charges, calling the attack allegations a "false flag" stunt by the NCRI, which it considers a terrorist group.

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The site was discovered by the British Security Service, MI5, outside London in the autumn of 2015.

According to The Daily Telegraph, terrorists had stockpiled thousands of ice packs containing ammonium nitrate at a site just outside the British capital. Three metric tons of ammonium nitrate – a common ingredient in homemade bombs – was said to have been discovered.

A police source told the newspaper that the plot was "proper organized terrorism" and that enough explosive materials were stored to do "a lot of damage."

The covert operation was reportedly launched after the British Security Service received information from a foreign government, the name of which was not disclosed.

A U.K. intelligence source told The Sun, "MI5 worked independently and closely with international partners to disrupt the threat of malign intent from Iran and its proxies in the U.K."

According to the report, the discovery took place just a few months following a nuclear deal signed between Iran and the U.K. along with several other superpowers but the British government did not disclose the information to the public.

The news comes amid mounting tensions between Iran and the West and after Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced a blanket ban on those with links to Hezbollah.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Islamic republic's chief proxy in the Middle East, is a heavily armed terrorist group, which often does Iran's bidding overseas.

The Shiite organization has been designated as a terrorist group by several western countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Israel, and Arab League member Bahrain. Some countries, such as Australia and France, only classify the group's military wing as a terrorist organization.

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The lifesaving handbook was compiled at the request of Syrian doctors who were struggling to treat children for horrific injuries they had not come across before in a country where health services have been decimated by eight years of war.

Nearly three-quarters of child casualties in the world's five deadliest wars are caused by explosives such as suicide bombs, landmines, unexploded ordnance and airstrikes, aid agency Save the Children said in a report on Thursday.

The charity, which helped produce the manual, calculated at least 5,322 children in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria were killed or maimed by explosives in 2017.

In some cases, it said children were killed when they picked up unexploded ordnance – which is small and sometimes colorful – to use as toys.

Children are more likely to die from blast injuries than adults, the charity said.

It calculated that nearly three times as many children as adult combatants have died from explosives in Syria, where densely populated towns have been shattered by weapons traditionally meant for open battlefields.

The aid group Syria Relief is distributing the handbook to emergency units across northwest Syria, and there are plans to roll it out in Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"For more than eight years we've seen children dying on the operating table from wounds that adults have survived," said one Syria Relief pediatrician, who asked not to be named.

"The tragedy is these deaths could have been prevented with basic training. This manual … will undoubtedly save lives."

The book was produced by the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership (PBIP) – a British coalition of doctors and humanitarians – and plans to translate it into other languages and create a smartphone app.

It said that most textbook knowledge of treating blasts was based on research on injured soldiers.

"We know children's bodies are different. They aren't just small adults." PBIP member Michael von Bertele, former head of British Army Medical Services, said in a statement.

Children's thinner skulls and less developed muscle put them at a greater risk of brain injury and internal organ damage.

Future growth also has to be factored in when amputating limbs or children can be left with even worse disabilities and lifelong pain.

One in five children worldwide lives in conflict-affected areas, according to Save the Children.

The charity is hosting a global symposium in The Hague on Thursday – the anniversary of its centenary – to discuss how to protect children in war zones and end impunity for those who commit atrocities against them.

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