...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
Strip over the past week, during which its forces led a maneuver across the territory, reaching its coastline.
"The role of the division is to surround Gaza City, to attack and destroy selected targets, including significant assets, and the headquarters of the Hamas
...always the voice of sweet reason...terror organization," the IDF says in a statement.
It says the 36th Division — made up of infantry forces, tanks, artillery, and combat engineers — struck some 1,600 Hamas targets, including infrastructure used by the terror group, weapon depots, anti-tank missile positions and observation posts.
The IDF says the division also killed more than 300 Hamas terror operatives amid the fighting.
It adds that in the last few hours alone, some 50 Hamas sites were hit and several button men were killed in close-quarters fighting.
The division has been moving at a slow pace, in order to properly clear areas of potential threats, including tunnels which are later destroyed.
A major threat that the division is working to counter is the large number of tunnels Hamas has, from which operatives pop out and launch RPGs at armored vehicles, and attempt to ambush forces.
Still, the 36th Division has identified that Hamas has recently struggled to carry out large-scale organized attacks on troops, after Israeli
...
KABOOM!...
s killed senior Hamas field commanders.
Heavy artillery strikes have been carried out within just a few hundred meters of the Israeli forces to push back any Hamas operatives seeking to target troops.
The military says it has ways to target Hamas operatives inside tunnels as well.
Amid the incursion, the division made various adjustments to counter Hamas’s use of drones to drop explosives on troops in the Gaza Strip, The Times of Israel has learned.
Meanwhile,
...back at the chili cook-off, Chuck and Manuel's rivalry was entering a new and more dangerous phase...
rockets have not been fired at Israel from the areas that the 36th Division captured.
The IDF believes the ongoing stage in the ground offensive will last several months, in order to achieve the objective of eliminating Hamas’s Gaza City stronghold with minimal casualties to Israeli forces.
IDF says troops uncovered weapons, military equipment at homes in northern Gaza
[IsraelTimes] The Israel Defense Forces says troops of the 551st Brigade scanning residential homes in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza found dozens of weapons, equipment, and intelligence materials.
The IDF says the cache included assault rifles, submachine guns, grenades, explosive devices, protective gear, and drones that are used by Hamas to drop explosives.
Some of the weapons and equipment were destroyed, while some were taken to Israel for further research, the IDF says.
Separately, the IDF says special forces located and destroyed a bomb-making lab in the Gaza Strip today.