Captain Daniel Maimon Toaff was 23 years old, deputy company commander of the Ghivati Corps of the Israeli Armed Forces (IDF), and is the first soldier of the Jewish state with Italian citizenship to be killed in combat since the beginning of the current military operations in the Gaza Strip.
Great-grandson of Rabbi Toaff, the 23-year-old remained killed yesterday together with three other comrades in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, in the southern Palestinian coastal territory, following the explosion of a device that also injured six other soldiers, three of whom are in serious condition.
Their deaths brought the total number of Israeli military casualties to 348 since the start of the IDF ground offensive in the Strip. According to a preliminary investigation by the Israeli military, the four soldiers were killed after entering a booby-trapped building, but the investigation is ongoing.
The young man, promoted to captain after being killed in action, was originally from Moreshet, a small settlement in northern Israel. He was joined by sergeants major Amit Bakri (21); Dotan Shimon (21); and Agam Naim, a 20-year-old paramedic. Naim is the first female soldier to be killed since the start of the IDF ground offensive in Gaza.
The Italian Jewish Community in Israel expressed its condolences to the family, announcing “with sorrow the loss” of Toaff. The IDF also said it “shares the family’s grief.” The funeral will be held today at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem.
The war has been raging in the Strip for more than 11 months since thousands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants entered Israel from Gaza on October 7, killing more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Since then, according to the Palestinian coastal territory’s Ministry of Health, at least 41,272 people have been killed in the Strip and 95,551 others were injured, mostly women and children.
