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Israel-Palestine
Five Israeli Soldiers Killed In a Second Attack in Gaza
2004-05-13
For the second time in as many days, Palestinian fighters blew up an Israeli armored personnel carrier in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, demolishing the vehicle and killing at least five Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military said Thursday morning. Palestinian guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of three Israeli army vehicles at 6 p.m. Wednesday, according to a military spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal. The vehicles had stopped along a cleared corridor between Egypt and the Gaza Strip during a search for cross-border smuggling tunnels. The rocket struck an armored personnel carrier loaded with explosive materials used to destroy tunnels, and the vehicle blew up, Dallal said. The blast killed an officer and four enlisted men and injured three other soldiers. The radical group Islamic Jihad asserted responsibility for firing the rocket.
RPG on a thin-skinned vehicle packed with explosives? Ouch.
The back-to-back incidents killed a total of 11 Israeli soldiers, making it the deadliest period for the Israeli military since April 9, 2002, when Palestinian gunmen killed 13 Israeli soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Early Thursday morning, an Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter fired at a group of Palestinians in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, killing seven people and critically injuring two. Israeli military officials said the men were trying to plant a roadside bomb. A Palestinian security official said the men were simply standing in the street.
"We wuz mindin' our own bidness, we wuz, and then BOOM! outta nowheres! T'aint fair!"
Political and military analysts in Israel said the soldiers' deaths would probably prompt calls for a review of military operations and equipment in Gaza and possibly encourage demands for an evacuation. "There is a tactical problem people are talking about with thin-skinned armored vehicles full of explosives," said Mark Heller, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. "Politically, it's going to reignite the debate about the withdrawal and disengagement from Gaza and push people to look for different ways to proceed with this idea."

"You can make too much of two bombings in two days -- such things happen in war," said Martin Van Creveld, a military historian at Hebrew University. "But what it does show is that our attempt to hold Gaza is doomed and it always has been doomed, and the sooner we get out of that damn place the better."
Sharon's plan looks better.
Posted by:Steve White

#2  Two for two? Are the Paleos getting lucky or do they know which vehicles are carrying demo? I leave out the possibility that they're getting good as a vanishingly small probability.
Posted by: Mercutio   2004-05-13 1:47:46 PM  

#1  A Palestinian security official said the men were simply standing in the street.

In the words of that old song :
Standin' on the corner watchin' all the girls go by...

Oops - They don't watch girls. It's un Islamic.

Gee - Musta been plantin' that bomb.

The next question is:

Early Thursday morning, an Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter fired at a group of Palestinians in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, killing seven people and critically injuring two.

With all the talk of small amounts of remains, are they (IDF) sure seven is an accurate count?
Could be more, could be less. . . .
Posted by: BigEd   2004-05-13 12:30:51 PM  

00:00