Another family in Israel woke up this morning to the knock on the door no parent can survive receiving.
Capt. David Hazutt, 21, a platoon commander in the Golani Brigade's 12th Battalion from Ashkelon, was killed overnight during a close-quarters firefight with a Hezbollah operative in the village of Deir Siryan in southern Lebanon.
At around 2 a.m., Golani soldiers entered a structure in the village when they encountered the operative. During the clash, Hazutt was killed and another soldier was lightly wounded. The injured soldier was evacuated to a hospital and his family was notified.
Following the attack, Israeli forces launched a manhunt for the Hezbollah operative and struck Hezbollah targets in the area.
Deir Siryan has been one of the most contested areas of Israel's southern Lebanon security zone, a village that has seen some of the war's most brutal close-range fighting over the past several months. The Golani Brigade's 12th Battalion has paid an especially heavy price in this war. In May, Capt. Maoz Israel Recanati, 24, also a platoon commander in the same battalion, was killed when a drone exploded in southern Lebanon. Now another of its young officers has fallen, in the same theater, in the same kind of nighttime operation, against the same enemy.
The framework agreement signed last week between Israel, Lebanon, and the United States was supposed to signal a new chapter. Hezbollah, apparently, did not get the message.
