As the Israeli ground offensive enters its sixth day, the IDF tanks and infantry are conducting military operations deep inside the terrorist-controlled territory in Gaza.
During the overnight strikes, Hamas suffered heavy losses as IDF ground troops advanced further into the terrorist-held northern Gaza — assisted by tanks, artillery and air support, the IDF disclosed on Thursday.
The IDF engineers were carrying out a massive operation to destroy the underground network of terrorist tunnels currently being used by Hamas terrorists to attack advancing Israeli troops, blowing up around 100 terror tunnels since the ground offensive began.
With the IDF breaching Hamas fortifications and reaching the outskirts of Gaza City, the terrorists are using Gaza’s urban terrain to ambush Israeli troops.
The Israeli military on Wednesday reported the death of seventeen soldiers over the last three days of the ground offensive. “17 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Tuesday in four incidents in the northern Gaza Strip and another incident in Kibbutz Be’eri nearby the Gaza border,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
The total Israeli military losses have reached 32o since Hamas launched the cross-border massacre on October 7. More than 1400 Israelis were killed, many of them mutilated, raped, and brutalized by Palestinian terrorists, and over 240 were taken as hostages into Gaza.
The IDF detailed its overnight operations in a Thursday morning press release :
Overnight, terrorist cells in the northern Gaza Strip fired anti-tank missiles, detonated explosive devices, and hurled grenades at IDF troops. The soldiers engaged with the terrorists, with the assistance of artillery fire and tanks, while directing an aerial strike from a helicopter and a missile strike from a naval boat. Dozens of terrorists were killed during the battles.In addition, during ground operations in the Gaza Strip, a terrorist cell fired at IDF troops. The troops directed an aircraft in a strike that killed the terrorists. IDF reserve troops, while receiving covering fire from the Israeli Navy, coordinated with aerial forces and directed an aircraft in a strike that neutralized an additional terrorist squad that planned to fire anti-tank missiles toward IDF soldiers.
According to Israeli media reports, Hamas terrorists are hurling Gaza civilians, including women and children, towards Israeli soldiers as they carry out sneak attacks on them. “IDF troops who engaged in fierce combat with Hamas terrorists for control over an operations base in the Gaza Strip were met with a disturbing tactic: roughly 100 women and children were pushed forward by Hamas to act as a human barrier,” the Israeli news website Ynet reported Wednesday.
The incident once again highlights Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields. The Islamic terrorist group is preventing civilians from leaving the war zone, setting up roadblocks and firing at residents fleeing to safety.
The Israeli military has begun the massive task of dismantling the vast network of tunnels built by Hamas to move fighters and store weapons stockpiles.
This tunnel network, which cost billions of dollars to construct, is a “labyrinth of passages, shafts and rooms believed to stretch more than 300 miles and possibly to a depth of more than 200 feet,” CBS reported earlier this week.
The terrorist infrastructure was funded by billions of dollars given by Muslim countries to Hamas under the cover of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. “The money came from Qatar, Iran and other Arab countries. And the money that Hamas collected by imposing import duties of goods,” the German TV channel Tagesschau reported on October 27, citing security experts.
The Times of Israel reported the IDF measures to destroy Hamas terror tunnels:
Army engineers are beginning a wide-scale operation to destroy Hamas tunnels in areas of the Gaza Strip that have come under Israeli control since the start of the ground offensive, the Walla news site reports.The combat engineers are using various types of robots and explosive devices to destroy the tunnels, detonate any booby traps installed by Hamas, and kill terrorists, the report says.“Maybe at first they were able to harass us, sting us by firing from tunnel exits, but after we established control of the areas, the engineering operation started,” a senior officer in the Southern Command tells Walla.“We are going to collapse the entrances and the tunnels on them. It will become a death zone. They made a mistake, they chose to be in a place they cannot escape from. They will die in the tunnels,” he said.The report says the troops have already destroyed some 100 tunnels not counting the ones hit in airstrikes.
Iran-sponsored Hezbollah terror militia continued rocket and missile attacks into northern Israel. The IDF is targeting missile launch sites and terrorist cells operating along the Israel-Lebanon border.
The Israeli news website Ynet reported Thursday:
The IDF spokesman said on early Thursday, that a surface-to-air missile was launched from Lebanon toward an IDF UAV. In response, the IDF struck the terrorist cell that fired the missile and the launch site. There was no damage to the UAV. In addition, a number of launches were identified from Lebanon toward the area of Har Dov and Mount Hermon in northern Israel. They fell in open areas. IDF artillery struck the source of the launches in response.
Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s Quds Force — regime’s foreign terrorist arm — is in Lebanon to coordinate Hezbollah’s onslaught against Israel. “The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, visited Lebanon to coordinate with Hezbollah concerning the conflict with Israel on Wednesday,” the Jerusalem Post reported, citing Lebanese media.
Iran is behind the planning and execution of the October 7 massacre. The cross-border attack into Israel was led by hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists, who received combat training in Iran just weeks ahead of the cross-border terror raid. “Roughly 500 Palestinian militants got specialized combat instruction at Iranian facilities as recently as September,” the Wall Street Journal revealed on October 25.
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