Twenty years after the abduction that shook Israel, the IDF Archive in the Defense Ministry has published for the first time the official operations logs from the Southern Brigade command post on the day Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. The original documents, released Thursday, trace minute by minute the fighting near Gaza, from the first reports of heavy fire and a damaged tank to the use of the Hannibal procedure and the growing realization that one soldier was missing and had likely been taken into the Strip.
According to the logs, Hamas militants crossed from Gaza on the morning of June 25, 2006 through a terror tunnel dug under the security route and attacked an IDF armored force near Kerem Shalom. Two soldiers, Lt. Hanan Barak and Sgt. Pavel Slutzker, were killed and others were wounded. Amid the chaos, the attackers abducted Shalit, pulled him out of the tank, and quickly moved him beyond the border fence.
The record shows the first alert at 05:13, when multiple explosions were reported in the Kerem Shalom area and commanders initially thought they might be mortar or rocket impacts. At 05:14, the log already noted, “There are casualties.” Soon after, reports began arriving about attack helicopters, special forces, and terrorists inside positions and trenches. At 06:40 came the key entry, “A soldier is missing from the tank,” and four minutes later the official code word “Hannibal” was recorded. By 07:12, troops found a vest and helmet on the fence, and at 08:00 the missing soldier was identified as Gilad Shalit.
Later entries show the uncertainty inside the command room. Around midday, officers noted that Shalit’s vest, found with trackers, had blood and shrapnel marks. In an afternoon situation summary, commanders wrote, “The soldier is probably alive, it is not known where he is,” adding that the attack was a Hamas operation and warning it could lead to broader escalation. At 16:34, the field commander said he had definitively identified Shalit’s tracks near what was believed to be the tunnel shaft. An hour later, the command post logged an unverified rumor that the hostage had been moved through a tunnel to Egypt to protect him and use him as leverage.
