The Qassam Brigades, which have led the 26-day-old battle with Israel, suggested in a statement that the officer may have been killed along with his captors in an Israeli assault that followed a suicide-bomb attack by Palestinian militants, who emerged from a tunnel that Israeli troops were trying to destroy near the southern border town of Rafah. Two Israelis were killed in the attack, bringing the military’s total casualty count in the operation to 63.

“Until now, we have no idea about the disappearance of the Israeli soldier,” the statement read. “We do not know his whereabouts or the conditions of his disappearance.” Saying the leadership had lost touch with its “troops deployed in the ambush,” the statement added: “Our account is that the soldier could have been kidnapped and killed together with our fighters.”