The Israel Defense Forces logo. Photo: IDF.

JNS.org – Armored Corps officers Capt. Dmitri Levitas, 26, from, Jerusalem, and Lt. Natan Cohen, 23, from Modiin, were killed Tuesday in Gaza, bringing the Israeli death toll in Operation Protective Edge to 29, the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday.

Twenty soldiers were wounded on Tuesday, and three of them are in serious condition.

Thirteen soldiers who were killed on Monday and Tuesday in clashes with terrorists in southern Israel and Gaza were laid to rest Tuesday. Lt. Col. Dolev Kedar, 38, commander of the Gefen Battalion of the IDF’s Bahad 1 officers’ training base, who was killed Monday as he and his troops thwarted a terrorist infiltration near Kibbutz Nir Am in southern Israel, was laid to rest in the military cemetery of his hometown, Modiin. Thousands attended the funeral.

“It’s not fair that the love of my life loved this country and the military so much, and it’s not fair that you always wanted to be the one in the lead,” Kedar’s wife Michal said in her eulogy, according to Israel Hayom.

Golani Brigade Staff Sgt. Oren Noach, 22, from Hoshaya, in Israel’s north, was buried in the community’s military cemetery. Noach was killed Sunday in a clash with terrorists in the Gaza neighborhood of Shujaiyya. Hundreds attended his funeral.

“I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to you properly. If only I had known we would never see each other again,” Noach’s father, Yigal, said in a broken voice over the grave.

Golani Brigade Sgt. Shon Mondshine, 19, from Tel Aviv, who was killed in the Shujaiyya incident, was laid to rest in the military plot of the Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery in Givatayim.

“It is inconceivable to me that you’re gone, that you’ve somehow just faded away,” Mondshine’s mother cried.