The first female soldier killed in combat in the Gaza Strip died Tuesday in a building explosion alongside three others fighting Hamas, officials said.
Israel Defense Forces Sgt. Agam Naim, 20, a paramedic from Kibbutz Mishmarot, would have completed six months of service in Gaza on Thursday and was about to go on leave to teach a paramedics course at the medical corps school when she was killed, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Though dozens of female soldiers were killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Naim was the first female to have been killed in the IDF’s ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, The Times of Israel reported.
While her family was terrified of her joining the fighting, they told her to “follow her heart,” her aunt Muriel told Walla.
“She said something I’ll never forget. She said that she wouldn’t be able to look into the eyes of the mothers of her comrades in her unit if they were going to Gaza and she wasn’t there to take care of them.”
The 20-year-old had been feeling under the weather and was told by the unit doctor she didn’t have to return as she was finishing her assignment on Thursday, her aunt said.
“Nevertheless, she insisted, saying she couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to her comrades. We spoke to her on Monday before she entered,” Murial continued.
“She called from the staging area, saying she loved us and everything was fine but that she would be unreachable as she would turn off her phone until Thursday. We told her we loved her and to take care of herself. And that was it.”
Naim’s grieving aunt noted parents send their kids to go fight “knowing the price isn’t worth it.”
“That’s the worst part. Now, there are more bereaved parents who must cope with this terrible price and live with it for the rest of their lives, knowing they let her go for something they maybe no longer believe in,” she said.
Naim was killed alongside three other soldiers: Capt. Daniel Mimon Toaff, 23; Sgt. Amit Bakri, 21; and Sgt. Dotan Shimon, 21.
According to an initial IDF probe, the four soldiers were killed after entering a booby-trapped building in the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, TOI reported.
Their deaths brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Gaza Strip to 348.
