their captors. When the abduction was discovered, the Northern Command ordered a "Hannibal situation". Israeli attack helicopters fired at 26 moving vehicles in the area since they assumed that the abducted soldiers were transported in one of them. Kerem Shalom crossing (2006) Tank gunner Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid from Gaza 25 June 2006. Two IDF soldiers were killed in the attack and another two were wounded. Shalit was held for five years, before being exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, which was the highest number released for a single Israeli prisoner. According to the Israeli commission of inquiry, headed by Giora Eiland, the Hannibal directive was declared more than an hour after the capture. By that time, Shalit and his captors were already well inside the Gaza strip. The declaration of Hannibal therefore had few practical consequences. Ayta ash-Shaab (2006) On 12 July 2006, two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were captured by Hezbollah in an ambush, in which three other soldiers were killed. The Hannibal directive was invoked and a force consisting of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers was sent across the border to capture a Hezbollah post and block the exit routes out of the town of Ayta ash-Sha’b. A Merkava II main battle tank however ran over a powerful explosive charge and was totally destroyed and its four crewmen killed. The rescue mission was therefore aborted. An eighth IDF soldier was killed trying to retrieve the bodies of the tank crew. The Hannibal directive triggered instant aerial surveillance and airstrikes inside Lebanon to limit Hezbollah's ability to move the soldiers it had seized. "If we had found them, we would have hit them, even if it meant killing the soldiers," a senior Israeli official said. The bodies of the two soldiers were returned in an exchange with Hezbollah in July 2008. Erez Crossing (2009) In 2009 Israeli civilian Yakir Ben-Melech was shot dead by Israeli security guards while trying to enter the Gaza Strip from Israel, by jumping the fence at the Erez crossing. In the Israeli press the man was described as a mentally disturbed Israeli citizen, who wanted to contact Hamas, so as to secure the release of Israeli captive Gilad Shalit. Officially, Ben-Melech was mistakenly identified as a potential terrorist. According to a report by Israeli radio the Hannibal procedure was declared