The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit reported on Thursday that Sergeant Major Ran Yavetz, 39, of Modiin, a soldier in the 6828th Patrol Battalion of the Bislah Brigade (828), was killed in an operational accident in a military zone near the Black Arrow Memorial outside Kibbutz Mefalsim, in which a mortar barrel exploded while firing at Jabaliya.
Ila Dekel, a friend of Ran and his wife Tamar, wrote, "I sat next to his wife Tamar at the Memorial Day ceremony just last week. Itay, his son, led the ceremony, Tavor stood beside him, and together they lit a candle in memory of the fallen. And it was only today that Ran has become one of the fallen we must remember.
Tamar sat next to me at the ceremony with a nine-month pregnant belly in front of her. She told me that she didn’t agree for Ran to go into Gaza this time so that she could call him as soon as she started giving birth, and she comforted me about Yonatan being in there without any phone reception."
She added, "How? How will she call him to the birth now from where he’s gone to? In the afternoon, Yonatan wrote to me saying he cried and broke down, but he is in the middle of clashes in Gaza now and he needs to pull himself together and continue fighting. And now we’re at home, suddenly have to tell the children that their friend's father was killed. Fear grips the heart."
"Ran, married to Tamar and father of Itay, Noga and Or, fell today in operational activity near the Gaza border,” wrote Modiin Mayor Haim Bibas on his Facebook account. On behalf of myself and the residents of the city, I send condolences to the Yavetz family in their heavy grief. May his memory be a blessing."