Posted on 07/25/2014 2:34:14 AM PDT by Star Traveler
As opposed to previous campaigns, the army has a concrete goal — finding the tunnels — which means Hamas knows precisely where to strike.
On Wednesday morning three paratroopers were killed, bringing the death toll since the beginning of the ground operation in Gaza to 32. It’s highly possible that those sitting around the General Staff table knew that this would be the price Israel would have to pay if it sought to neutralize the tunnel threat from Hamas. The public, still very much supportive of the operation, has been surprised. After all, during Operation Cast Lead in 2009, over 23 days of fighting, the army lost only 10 soldiers, four of them from friendly fire.
Take the case of the Paratroop Brigade. A platoon from its demolitions company set out early in the morning on Wednesday. Like the rest of the field units, they receive a daily list of objectives. The list can include securing a certain intersection; advancing toward a rocket cache; taking a building known to house a tunnel entrance; establishing perimeter security for demolition forces working on a tunnel, in a hostile environment, with a scary amount of explosives; laying an ambush for rocket squads; and a host of other tasks. The IDF has yet to convey explicitly what the paratroopers were up to but almost all of the above tasks would require, when operating in urban areas, entering a house.
Earlier in the week the Shin Bet provided real-time intelligence about a booby-trapped house in Khan Younis, saving many lives. On Wednesday, there was no warning. A squad of Hamas operatives, lying in ambush, waited until the paratroopers had entered the house and then hit the detonator. A section of the home crumbled and the operatives opened fire, pinning the force down.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
Israel would be bombing close to their own villages then ...
Uhhh, maybe because it's a WAR, soldiers die in wars.
I wouldn’t extend not answering every single post to me, with some kind of political philosophy ... it could be something more mundane like running out of time ... :-) ...
Someone was comparing statistics from a past war ... so the numbers are higher now ...
Oh ... and one more thing, I didn’t even see this post until I happened to notice the post right after yours ... that’s just the way it goes.
The person is probably climbing up into a mosque or orphanage. Bomb all exits and entrances...clear the area.
“Qatar appears to be falling into Iran’s orbit.”
You do know that Qatar is 90% Sunni and Iran is Shia, right?
That's a tunnel beneath the Egyptian-Gaza border in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Link.
It’s in terms of Hamas ... you’ve got Turkey hosting Hamas leaders, Qatar being a major financier and Iran being a major funder of Hamas before Qatar became the prime one. They’ve all got the connections to Hamas.
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