Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in a blast in Rafah on June 15, in one of its heaviest losses of the war, the Israel Defence Forces reported. The Israeli troops were all killed inside an armoured personnel carrier during an ambush by Hamas fighters, the Israeli military said. According to an initial IDF probe, the troops were all killed inside a Namer armoured combat engineering vehicle (CEV). Hamas confirmed the Rafah attack by saying its fighters “carried out a complex ambush against enemy vehicles” in Rafah’s Tel as-Sultan district. In Rafah, witnesses reported clashes between militants and Israeli troops in the city’s west, and artillery fire towards a refugee camp in the city centre.