An Israeli reserve soldier was killed on Friday night in an anti-tank missile attack along the border with Lebanon amid renewed skirmishes, the Israel Defense Forces announced Saturday.
The soldier was named as Staff Sgt. (res.) Omer Balva, 22, a commander in the 9203rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade, from Herzliya.
Balva was a dual Israeli-American citizen. A child of Israeli parents, he grew up in Rockville, Maryland, where he went to the Charles E. Smith Jewish day school.
He went to Israel to serve in the IDF, but was in the US last week when called into reserve service, promptly flying back to Israel to report for duty.
In response to a number of missile and rocket attacks by Hezbollah on Friday, the IDF said it carried out a number of strikes overnight targeting sites belonging to the Iran-backed terror group in southern Lebanon.





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