..in Rafah. Unlike in other areas of Gaza, the terror group largely abandoned its posts, with very few operatives attempting to engage Israeli forces in close quarters...
According to military assessments, Hamas's Rafah Brigade was bolstered by terror operatives who fled from northern Gaza and other parts of the Strip as the IDF first operated there. This gave the Rafah Brigade, considered by the IDF as the weakest of Hamas's brigades, considerable time and manpower to prepare itself for the looming Israeli offensive in southern Gaza.
Still, as the IDF began its operation in Rafah, the military assessed that only 2,000 terror operatives remained in the city, meaning that many had fled with the estimated 1.2 million civilians to an Israeli-designated "humanitarian zone" further north...
"I estimate that to [achieve] our next objective, which is to finish up Shaboura and Tel Sultan... we want to demolish them entirely, it will take more or less a month, at this level of intensity,"
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