Posted on 12/29/2008 6:48:54 PM PST by Libloather
All-out war
Web posted at: 12/30/2008 5:27:4
Source ::: DPA
Israel pounds Gaza for third day; tanks on the border
GAZA/TEL AVIV: Palestinian militants launched missiles last night at Israeli targets which had not previously come under fire, as Israel, after three days of massive airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, was readying to expand its offensive against the group to a ground assault.
The toll of Operation “Cast Lead”—launched Saturday to curb rocket and mortar attacks from the strip - reached to at least 345 Palestinians dead and 1,600 injured, Gaza emergency services chief Mu’awia Hassanein said. Four Israelis have also been killed and dozens injured.
Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip slammed into the Israeli port city of Ashdod last night, fatally injuring one person, injuring another critically, and three others lightly.
The Russian-produced Grad missiles which hit Ashdod, over 30km from the Gaza Strip, marked the furthest a rocket fired from the salient has landed in Israel, although one rocket landed south of the city on Sunday.
At the same time as the strike on Ashdod, other missiles and mortar shells showered Israeli communities closer to the Strip, killing one person, bringing to three the number of people killed in rocket attacks yesterday and to four the number killed by the missiles since the Israeli offensive began. Large columns of tanks, military vehicles and buses with Israeli soldiers on board meanwhile have moved southwards, deploying near the Israeli border with Gaza in what could indicate a possible ground invasion, witnesses said.
The Israeli army also declared the area around Gaza a “closed military zone,” meaning no civilians will be allowed through roadblocks set up on key entry roads. The Israeli cabinet on Sunday authorised the call up of 6,500 reserve soldiers. A military spokesman, Captain Benjamin Rutland, however, said the soldiers had not been mobilised yet and this could take as long as one day.
Observers said this meant any ground offensive was unlikely to start soon. They added Israel was likely to get as much out of the airstrikes as long as the clear weather, forecast to turn today, permitted. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak reiterated yesterday that the offensive in Gaza would be expanded “as much as necessary” until its goals were achieved.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel would “exhaust” the offensive until it achieved a change in the balance of power between itself and Hamas, the radical Islamic movement ruling Gaza.
The latest Palestinian deaths included at least seven killed in the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabaliya. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the target was a truck transporting “dozens” of Russian-type Grad rockets, which she said Hamas was apparently trying to relocate to another hideout as a result of Israel’s massive assaults on warehouses and underground bunkers storing rockets.
The Gaza emergency services chief, Hassanein, said that more than 250 injured Palestinians were in serious condition and needed urgent transfers to hospitals outside the strip. Hamas, however, is said to have rejected an offer by Cairo to allow the transportation of severely wounded Gazans to Egypt.
A car in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis was also rocketed, killing four militants of the radical Islamic Jihad faction and one of the men’s nine-year-old sons.
The Israel Air Force bombed and rocketed at least 65 more Hamas targets throughout Gaza yesterday.
Militant factions in Gaza, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, nevertheless continued their rocket and mortar attacks from the enclave at southern Israel, launching over 60 by last night.
One Israeli, an Arab Bedouin from the south of the country, was killed yesterday when a Russian-type Grad rocket fired by Hamas struck the construction site where he was working in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. At least 14 others were injured.
The majority of the Palestinian dead are Hamas militants, but at least 57 are civilians, according to a “conservative” and “rising” tally carried out in hospitals by staff of a UN agency in Gaza, a spokesman said.
The Gaza emergency services chief, Hassanein, said that more than 250 injured Palestinians were in serious condition and needed urgent transfers to hospitals outside the strip. Hamas, however, is said to have rejected an offer by Cairo to allow the transportation of severely wounded Gazans to Egypt.
A military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said targets hit yesterday included the Gaza City office of de-facto Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas. Residents said a neighbour’s house in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp was hit instead.
Planes also bombed more smuggling tunnels along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, while the Israel Navy shelled Hamas outposts on the coast and inland, she said.
As many as 40 tunnels, used to smuggle goods and weapons into the strip, were said to have already been destroyed in a matter of minutes when bombed on Sunday.
A Palestinian stabbed and injured three Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Qiryat Sefer, west of Ramallah yesterday morning, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said. An armed paramedic shot and seriously wounded the attacker.
Israeli police were on high alert to prevent further revenge attacks and rioting, after thousands of Arab Israelis and Palestinians, throwing stones and bottles, protested Sunday against the Gaza campaign in East Jerusalem and in such Arab towns as Umm el-Fahm, northern Israel.
Israel launched the Gaza offensive one week after a six-month, Egyptian-mediated truce ended, which Hamas had announced it would not renew. During that week, Gaza militants fired more than 200 rockets and mortars at southern Israel.
The Israel Air Force bombed and rocketed dozens more targets throughout Gaza yesterday, on the third day of a massive air offensive against Hamas, aimed at curbing rocket and mortar attacks from the enclave.
Five daughters of Anouar Balousha, a resident of the densely-populated northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, were killed when debris flew into his house, located close to a Hamas-used mosque targeted late on Sunday. The youngest was four, the oldest 15 years old. Two boys aged around six and 12 were also killed by shrapnel in the southern town of Rafah, hospital officials said.
Large columns of tanks, military vehicles and buses with Israeli soldiers on board meanwhile have moved southwards, deploying near the Israeli border with Gaza in what could indicate a possible impending ground invasion, witnesses said. The Israeli army also declared the area around Gaza a “closed military zone,” meaning no civilians will be allowed through roadblocks set up on key entry roads.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak reiterated yesterday that the offensive in Gaza would be expanded “as much as necessary” until its goals were achieved. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel would “exhaust” the offensive until it achieved a change in the balance of power between itself and Hamas, the radical Islamic movement ruling Gaza.
At least 316 Palestinians, many of them of Hamas, have been killed since the massive air campaign, codenamed “Operation Cast Lead,” started on Saturday, just over a week after a fragile, six-month truce between Israel and Hamas formally ended.
But at least 57 of the dead are civilians, according to a “conservative” and “rising” tally carried out in hospitals by staff of a UN agency in Gaza, a spokesman said. Two Israelis, both of them civilians, have also been killed in Israel by rocket fire since Saturday, including an Arab-Israeli Bedouin who died yesterday when a Russian-type Grad rocket fired by Hamas struck the construction site where he was working in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. The Grad injured at least 14 others, as Palestinian militants continued to rocket and mortar attacks also yesterday, firing at least 40 at Ashkelon, the town of Sderot and Israeli areas elsewhere near the strip.
In Gaza, the Israeli offensive has thus far injured at least 1,400 more Palestinians, Gaza emergency services chief Mu’awia Hassanein said. He said more than 250 of them were in serious condition and needed urgent transfers to hospitals outside the strip. Hamas, however, is said to have rejected an offer by Cairo to allow the transportation of severely wounded Gazans to Egypt.
A military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said at least 60 targets hit in Gaza early yesterday afternoon since which included the Gaza City office of de-facto Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyah, of Hamas. Residents said a neighbour’s house in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp was hit instead.
Jets also bombed more smuggling tunnels along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, while the Israel Navy shelled Hamas outposts on the coast and inland, she said.
As many as about 40 tunnels, used to smuggle goods and weapons into the strip, were said to have already been destroyed in a matter of minutes when bombed Sunday.
On Monday morning, a Palestinian stabbed and injured three Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Qiryat Sefer, west of Ramallah, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said. An armed paramedic shot and seriously wounded the attacker.
Israeli police were on high alert to prevent further revenge attacks and rioting, after thousands of Arab Israelis and Palestinians, throwing stones and bottles, protested Sunday against the Gaza campaign in East Jerusalem and in such Arab towns as Umm el-Fahm, northern Israel.
Israel launched the deadly and destructive offensive in Gaza after militant factions in Gaza, notably the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, fired more than 180 rockets and mortars at southern Israel in the week after a six-month, Egyptian-brokered truce formally expired December 19.
Since the offensive began late Saturday morning, they fired at least another 160 rockets and mortars at Israel, the army said, while a total of more than 300 targets throughout Gaza have been hit.
L
Roll Tanks!
Flies to flypaper, baby.
Kill as many as you possibly can. You won’t get another shot soon.
Shi’a and Sunni mean they each regard the other as heretics, almost as bad as infidels.
“It is going to now get ugly. Hamas has advanced anti tank weapons. Guerilla training. Lots of fanatics. Israel would be better to just carpet bomb and be done with it.”
It will be no uglier than the casualty rate Americans took when they flattened Saddam’s armies.
It will be a turkey shoot. And Israel will be the shooters not the shot.
IDF compare very favorably with US forces.
Like Iraq, Hamas promises the mother of all battles. What they will find is that the war is just a mother.
Thought you might like watching these. Many more where they came from.
AC-130 Mission
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQhjaCgAS80&feature=related
Insurgents getting gunned down by Apache’s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJNQ60r86lY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETSDHyQySL8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHCchnGdtJA
Is that anything like the 10,000 troops we were going to lose if we attacked Saddam?
I guess you missed the outcome of that whole Lebanon dust up a couple years back.....
L
My mistake, I thought Hamas was shia.
“They’re going in... “
—
‘Big mistake.’
A ground incursion is exactly the right thing to do after softening them up with aerial bombardment. The Gaza Strip ought to be turned into, and maintained as, a no man’s land.
BTW, I agree with your tag line - awkward stage indeed.
We actually looked to the IDF as we prepared for guerilla warfare in the streets and alleys of Iraq. They have had much experience in Jenin and other small towns. You might say this has been the type of war the Iraeli’s have been fighting year in and year out.
The problems will begin if they cannot fight with an element of freedom as was the case in Lebanon.
Israel lost 4% of her entire population in the war of Israeli Independence in 48. Far more that a few hundred.
Hamas and Hezbollah (I choose older spelling) are clowns compared to a disciplined army like the IDF.
Let me put the difference another way: If youwere idealogically neutral, would you prefer to throw you lot with Israel or with the Hamas?
And even in Lebanon where IDF hands were tied they lost few Merkavas to damage which couldn’t be repaired.
Far better to be in a Merkava than to be in position firing a sagger (if I have my nomenclature right) missile.
“Damn the torpedoes; Full speed ahead” quote from Union Admiral Farragut, Civil War.
Swap Palestinians for torpedoes and there is the slogan for this current war with Palestine.
GO ISRAEL GO!!
I want to see the Gaza Strip back in the hands of Israel.
Then again, I want to see the Golan Heights, West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, and East Jerusalem all back in the hands of the Israeli’s. It’s their land, they’ve lived there for 5000 years, it’s theirs for the taking and keeping.
Soon
Israel should have knocked out Hezbollah in that 31 day war last year, they should never have agreed to leave the Gaza Strip, and they should destroy the non-existent country of palestine.
Palestine should not exist!!!!!! That country is an excuse used by Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as other smaller terrorist groups, to get more and more land from the Israelis and to get closer to cities like Tel Aviv. I tell ya, if America doesn’t start openly supporting and sending over supplies for Israel during these short wars, the terrorist groups are going to get very close to taking over the nation of Israel. God Help Israel.
True. Clowns is the wrong description at least wrt their ability to exact a price for Israeli suppression. and I had to review lebanon II. Saggers were little used as more modern artillery took their place. The Hezbollah also used some good tactics in focusing fire on isolated tanks.
I have great confidence in the IDF, however, if they are directed by the military and allowed to fight.
The Hiz up north and Hamas both have trained to fight tanks.
I think the IDF has learned from our experience in Afganistan and to a lesser extent, Iraq.
I expect a combined arms, by-the-book counter-insurgency. Light infantry, specops and every type of aerial vehicle made. Thousands of 'em. Boots on the ground and lookin' to kill.
Hello CT, while I’m not doubting the IDF, Hamas has been trained and equipped with roadside bombs that were developed by Iranians and used by Hezbollah in the 2006 war, especially the few hours of intense battles around WAdi Salouki.
Of 52 tanks damaged, 5 will be written off.
These are:
MK II: 2 (one destroyed by roadside bomb.)
Mk III: 1
MK IV: 2 (one destroyed by roadside bomb.)
more info here:
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/glob...127813&fid=942
Defense establishment favors Rafael tank protection system
Rafael’s system is less advanced than IMI’s Iron Fist, but it is at a more advanced stage of development.
Amnon Barzilai 29 Aug 06 17:29
52 IDF Merkava tanks were damaged during the war against Hizbullah in Lebanon. 50 tanks were hit by anti-tank missiles and two were damaged by roadside bombs, according to the Ministry of Defense Merkava tank program administration.
One lesson from the war is need to quickly provide Merkava tanks with active protection systems able to destroy incoming missiles. The Merkava tank program administration and IDF Ground Forces Command, which is responsible for weapons procurement, are monitoring two active protection systems for armored fighting vehicles: Israel Military Industries Ltd.’s (IMI) Iron Fist, and Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd.’s Trophy.
A senior defense establishment source told “Globes”, “Although development of Iron First has made very good progress over the last two years, it is far less developed than Rafael’s Trophy system. On the other hand, the potential of IMI’s system is much greater than that of Rafael’s system.”
The Merkava tank program administration believes that, were it not for the risk of a new war, it might be better to wait for testing of Iron Fist to be completed, because it is considered more advanced. In order to create a critical mass of tanks able to deal with the threat of anti-tank missiles, one to two brigades (200 tanks) need to be equipped with active protection systems, at a cost of at least $100 million.
According to Merkava tank program administration figures, missiles penetrated 22 tanks, killing 23 crewmen. The missiles in these cases were heavy Russian-made RPG 29, Kornet E, Metis-M, and Concourse missiles, used by Hizbullah. These are tandem missiles, with a double warhead that can penetrate the Merkava’s reactive armor and steel plates 70-90 cm thick.
Tests conducted on the damaged tanks indicated that Hizbullah had full information needed to identify the Merkava’s weak spots.
18 of the damaged tanks were the most modern Merkava Mark IV. Eight of the tanks were still serviceable, despite being hit.
The Merkava tank program administration said five of the damaged tanks cannot be returned to service, including two Merkava Mark II and one Mark III. The two tanks damaged by roadside bombs were a Mark II and Mark IV, which will not be returned to operational use. The Mark IV tank was equipped with underside armor, which prevented a large number of casualties among its seven-man crew; only the one soldier was killed.
18 of the 23 crewmen killed were in five tanks hit, half of them in clashes in Wadi Salouki. The Merkava tank program administration noted that when counting the tank casualties, it should be taken into account that some of the tanks hit were carrying additional troops in addition to their four-man crews, which increased the potential casualties.
The tanks protected 90% of the soldiers they were carrying.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on August 30, 2006
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