|
Several tunnel terrorists still missing, may be in Israel
[Ynet] The Paleostinian Islamic Jihad...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... (PIJ) suffered a major blow Monday, when a tunnel carrying its operatives‐including senior commanders‐exploded by the IDF, killing nine Death Eaters with five Jihad terrorists still considered missing, possibly within Israeli territory. The IDF considers the incident to still be ongoing, with the Gazoo Division remaining on high alert in fear of PIJ retaliatory measures following the tunnel's detonation, with the army saying it was merely 200 ‐ 300 meters from one of its outposts in the Kissufim sector. A shaft exiting into Israeli territory was not yet excavated, the army added. The tunnel detonated Monday was considered unique due to the organization that excavated it‐the Islamic Jihad‐which thus far concentrated on developing advanced rocket capabilities, occasionally better than Hamas's. The PIJ has some 10,000 fighters in the strip and has equipped itself with hundreds of medium-range rockets, reaching up to 40 kilometers, and several dozen relatively new short-range rockets, only capable of reaching the area surrounding Gazoo but carrying a payload of hundreds of kilograms of explosives. The latter rockets are equivalent to Hezbollah's Burqan rockets in their destructive potential. The organization coordinates with Hamas but is considered independent, and its stance on the reconciliation agreement has yet to become known. Due to heightened tensions, work on the underground anti-tunnel barrier wall was partially halted in light of daily status evaluations and the danger snipers pose to the project's employees and the forces acting as their security. The IDF also has not ruled out the possibility Iran, the organization's chief financier, will consider the new situation an opportunity to hamstring the newly-found reconciliation, brokered by Egypt, and urge PIJ to retaliate in order to create escalation within the entire strip. "The Islamic Jihad's headquarters are in Syria, where decisions are made in coordination with Iran," the Israeli officer explained. New discoveries regarding the detonated tunnel New details regarding the IDF campaign against terror tunnels in the Gazoo Strip came to light Wednesday, as it was discovered the Gazoo Division has been operating a group of experts‐dubbed "the brain" by the senior officer‐for about a year, tasked with locating and destroying tunnels. The lab, which is overseen by an officer affiliated with the division, has engineers, geologists, engineering officers and intelligence personnel all working in tandem to interpret data received by the technological systems deployed in the field, including the sensor array that picked up the tunnel this week. The tunnel exploded as part of an operation that mobilized dozens of officers and soldiers, and the tunnel's detonation was precise thanks to the experts' efforts. The operational also entailed preliminary deployment in the sector, strengthening defenses near the border and isolating the space around the tunnel. The laboratory was designed to operate not merely against tunnels penetrating into Israeli territory, but to also translate its innovative capabilities for the forces maneuvering around the strip during the next conflagration. The information gleaned by "the brain" will assist soldiers in handling Hamas's many upgraded offensive tunnels, through which the organization attained one of its greatest achievement during Operation Protective Edge: kidnapping the bodies of Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin. Islamic Jihad excavators worked on the tunnel for about a year, and five of them were performing digs while it exploded, which may mean the organization was unaware its tunnel was discovered and signaled for demolition by the IDF. Posted by: trailing wife 2017-11-02 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=500789 |