On Sunday morning, June 25, 2006, Hamas operatives infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip through an underground tunnel and attacked an IDF armored force operating near Kerem Shalom. In the fierce battle, two soldiers were killed and others were wounded, and amid the confusion the army faced its worst fear, that one soldier had been abducted into Gaza. On the 20th anniversary of the event, the IDF Archives at the Defense Ministry has released the original operations logs from the southern brigade command center and the commander’s post, known as “Ba Bamanehara,” for the first time.
The handwritten notes show how quickly the situation escalated. Early entries recorded explosions and initial reports of casualties at 05:13, followed by orders to scramble attack helicopters and reports of gunfire near the fence. The tank nicknamed “Panther A” took the main hit from an anti-tank missile, and the logs later confirmed, “In tank Panther A, one dead for sure.” The crew members killed were tank commander Lt. Hanan Barak and Sgt. Pavel Slutsker.
By 06:40, the log noted, “A soldier is missing from the tank,” and four minutes later the code word “Hannibal” was activated to prevent a kidnapping. At 06:48, the warning was repeated to all forces, “One soldier from the tank is unknown where! Hannibal.” At 08:00, the captive was formally identified: “The name of the abducted soldier, Gilad Shalit.” Later that morning, trackers found signs of movement and, at 13:38, his body armor was found with bloodstains and shrapnel.
Afternoon assessments suggested the attack had been planned for weeks and might trigger wider escalation. At 16:34, the commander identified the soldier’s tracks near what was believed to be the tunnel shaft. By 17:38, a rumor was circulating that Shalit had been moved through a tunnel to Egypt, but the logs say the reliability was unclear. That rumor was wrong, Shalit was held alive by Hamas in Gaza for 5 years and 4 months, 1,941 days, until his release in the prisoner exchange of October 2011.
