On the 20th anniversary of Gilad Shalit’s abduction, the Israel Defense Forces Archive at the Defense Ministry released the operational logs from the day he was taken captive. The records, from the Southern Brigade command post in the Gaza Division, begin with the first reports of a tank being hit and end with the realization that Shalit had been seized.
According to the logs, on the morning of June 25, 2006, a militant squad crossed into Israel from Gaza through a tunnel and attacked an armored unit from Battalion 71 of the 188th Brigade near Kerem Shalom. Two IDF soldiers were killed and others wounded, and Shalit, then a corporal, was taken back into the Strip. At 05:13, the first report noted explosions in the area, and one minute later the words "there are casualties" appeared, alongside a request to dispatch attack helicopters.
At 06:34, the command post received an updated situation report saying two of the dead had been evacuated from the tank, two wounded were still inside it, and a third wounded soldier had been removed. Only at 06:40, more than an hour after the attack, did the logs explicitly say a soldier was missing from the tank. Four minutes later, the code word "Hannibal" was entered, and subsequent notes said a soldier from the tank was unaccounted for. Troops also reported finding a vest and helmet on the border fence, and wrote that the whereabouts of the militants were unknown, that two had been killed, and that eight had infiltrated.
By 08:00, Shalit was formally identified, along with the two soldiers killed in the tank, commander Lt. Hanan Barak and driver Sgt. Pavel Slutsker. Later that day, the logs assessed that Shalit was likely alive and warned the abduction could escalate into a broader confrontation. Shalit, now 39, was held in Gaza for five years and four months, and was freed on October 18, 2011, in a deal with Hamas that saw 1,027 Palestinian security prisoners released from Israeli jails.
