Female IDF soldier killed in Israel by Hezbollah drone

The 20-year-old soldier died while attempting to reach a bomb shelter during the attack.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel Defense Forces Sgt. Rotem Yanai, a welfare officer in the Givati Brigade, was killed in northern Israel by an explosive drone launched by the Hezbollah terror group, the IDF announced in a statement.

Yanai, 20, was from the northern Israeli town of Givat Ada. She is survived by her parents, Hilit and Tal, and her two brothers, Dor and Aviad.

Her aunt, Meital Ansbacher, said the family had already endured severe trauma after one of Yanai’s brothers was wounded during the Hamas-led October 7 massacres.

The family “thought the worst had already happened, and then yesterday the absolute worst happened,” Ansbacher said.

Speaking about her niece, she described Yanai as a “radiant, smiling girl, positive, and always surrounded by friends.”

According to a preliminary IDF investigation, Yanai was killed after the drone struck a building inside a military compound near the border community of Shomera.

At the time of the attack, Yanai was rushing toward a bomb shelter but did not manage to reach it before the explosion.

The blast that killed Yanai also wounded two reservists, one of them seriously.

Yanai is the 12th Israeli soldier killed since a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon brokered by President Donald Trump was announced in mid-April.

She is also the 24th Israeli fatality since the outbreak of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, which began in late February.

The attack came amid a continuing wave of Hezbollah drone strikes targeting Israeli forces along the northern border.

Earlier this week, Sgt. Nahorai Laizer, 19, from Eilat and a soldier in the Combat Engineering Battalion, was killed by an explosive drone in southern Lebanon. Another soldier was seriously wounded in that incident.

Last week, shortly before the start of Shavuot, Sgt. Noam Hamburger, 23, from Atlit, was killed when an explosive drone detonated above an IDF force at the Birnit outpost between Kibbutz Sasa and Tanta on the Lebanese border.