IDF soldiers on the Israel-Gaza Strip border. Photo: Reuters / Ibraheem Abu Mustafa.

“It was simply a miracle from heaven” — that is how the father of the IDF officer who was moderately wounded by sniper fire on the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Wednesday described his son’s survival on Thursday, the Hebrew news site Mako reported.

The Givati Brigade officer — who served in the same company as the soldier who was killed by a Gaza sniper last Friday — was hit in the stomach by a bullet as he took part in dispersing a group of Palestinian children who were rioting on the border.

According to the officer’s father, the bullet passed through his stomach without hitting any vital organs.

“He is fully conscious and told me what happened yesterday,” the father explained to reporters gathered at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. “He is really lucky.”

The father said his son was a highly-motivated soldier. “He said, ‘As long as there isn’t quiet in the country, I must be a soldier,’” the father recalled. “This is why he became an officer.”