Operation Cast Lead
Day 18 - Tuesday 13 January 2009
Residents inside the enclave say the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday saw some of the most intense fighting since the start of the Israeli offensive 18 days ago. Israeli ground troops pushed deeper into Gaza City, pounding targets with artillery and tank fire, and what Israeli officials say were 60 air strikes between Monday and Tuesday.
Israeli forces are ploughing into Gaza City and other densely populated Palestinian areas as air and ground attacks against Hamas continue. The latest Israeli air raid took place in Rafah city in the south of the Gaza Strip. During the attack various houses and institutions not belonging to security forces or to Hamas were destroyed, including an orphanage and the Al-Fadheela mosque. During Armored Corps, Engineering Corps and Infantry Corps operations on Monday night (Jan.12) in the northern Gaza Strip, two booby-trap rigged tunnels and large amounts of weaponry were uncovered close to the security fence. The forces fired at three terror operatives and uncovered many weapons in the area. In addition, forces uncovered a number of additional smuggling tunnels used by Hamas. Throughout the night, approximately 30 terror operatives were hit.
Hamas continued to use mosques as operational centers in order to fire at IDF soldiers. Fire was opened from the yard of a mosque at IDF forces, who then returned the fire. In a separate incident, the IAF hit terror operatives in the yard of a mosque. IDF forces spotted a number of terror operatives planting an explosive device in Gaza City and directed aerial forces that struck them. Different pieces of equipment used by Hamas, including four mortar launchers, an explosive device, a vest and a camera were uncovered in the outskirts of Gaza City.
The IAF continued to target terrorist sites on Monday night (Jan. 12) and hit over 60 targets, among them a hotel in which terror operatives were fathering in order to fire at IDF forces, a number of Hamas terror operatives who were rigging a house with explosive devices, fifteen smuggling tunnels in the Philadelphi Corridor, over fifteen rocket launching sites, ten Hamas outposts, fifteen squads of armed operatives, seven weaponry storage facilities, a weaponry manufacturing facility located in the house of a Hamas terror operative, and a rocket launching squad. Dozens of additional targets were struck in order to assist Ground Forces, when preparations for fire at IDF forces were identified from those sites.
Israel Navy boats assisted in enforcing the marine closure on the Gaza Strip and prevented the passage of boats that might arrive in the area.
On Monday night (Jan. 12), an IDF officer was critically wounded and two IDF soldiers were lightly to moderately wounded after an explosive device, used to target forces, was detonated in a booby trapped house. The soldiers were evacuated to hospitals in Israel and their families have been notified. The forces were performing searches in the northern Gaza Strip. Additional weaponry was uncovered while searching the booby-trapped house, which included a machine gun and a flak-jacket.
The infantry reserves have joined Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. The first reserve forces entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening (Jan. 11); additional forces were deployed on Monday (Jan. 12). The reserve soldiers who joined the ground operation are not a replacement for the regular forces currently fighting in the Gaza Strip; they are gradually deployed in addition to the ground forces that are already operating in Gaza.
In the following days, the reserve soldiers will take over operations currently being carried out by regular infantry soldiers, such that the regular infantry soldiers can advance to territories that they have not yet reached in order to hit the Hamas terror infrastructure in those areas. IDF forces expect that this act of reinforcement will allow them to uncover smuggling tunnels, weaponry storage facilities, and launching sites that have not yet been uncovered, and to fight terrorists operating in different areas. The reinforcement troops will also continue to reduce the rocket fire perpetrated by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
The various reserve units trained at the Ground Training Center at the Tze'elim military base over the past few weeks. Over the course of the training period, the reservists prepared for urban warfare. New and advanced equipment was issued to the reserve soldiers, and they have expressed their satisfaction about the quality of the equipment and emphasized its role in the improvement of their operational abilities.
Over the last two years, reserve forces and soldiers in their mandatory service trained more intensively than in previous years and participated in numerous field exercises. These training activities place emphasis on operational preparedness for battle and on the mental readiness of soldiers in combat situations.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi says Israeli forces have hit Hamas hard, but he says the offensive will continue until Israel's goals are achieved. Ashkenazi says Israeli forces have inflicted damage on Hamas including its infrastructure, its government institutions and its military wing. But he says there is still much work ahead. He says his forces are working to inflict further damage on the military infrastructure and to limit the rocket fire into Israel. The Israeli aim is to end Hamas' ability to fire rockets at its civilians in southern Israel. Tuesday, militants fired more rockets shortly after sunrise. Some 15 rockets were fired into Israel by Hamas.
With both Israel and Hamas ignoring UN demands for a ceasefire, the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, has warned of a 'waterfall of blood' unless there's an end to the fighting. Israel says it's close to achieving its goal of stopping militant rocket attacks. Unwilling to end the campaign now - which could waste the gains made so far - Israel refuses to speak with Hamas, preparing the ground for a third week of violence. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni defended her nation's actions: "Hamas is a terrorist organisation and needs to be stopped. Hamas controls Gaza strip and what Israel is doing is a fight against terror", she said.
In a rare televised appearance, Ismail Haniya, one of the leaders of the radical Islamic Hamas movement, which seized control of Gaza in June 2007, said that the fighting would continue, but added that the movement was prepared to examine any initiative "to stop the aggression and lift the blockade" on Gaza. He said victory is at hand for Hamas.
The battered Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip is seeking an immediate cease fire with Israel, but the organisation's political leader in Damascus, Khaled Mashal, has thus far refused to make the necessary concessions, according to Israeli television reports on Sunday night. The Arab affairs analyst on Channel Two, Ehud Ya'ari, said the dispute amounts to a virtual split between the two Hamas centers of power. Sharp differences emerged at a meeting yesterday in Cairo between two Hamas representatives from Gaza and a delegation from Mashal in Damascus. They had come to hear an Egyptian ceasefire proposal outlined by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. The Egyptian said the agreement included the creation of a mechanism to prevent further smuggling of rockets and other armaments to the Gaza Strip in tunnels from Egypt and a demand that Hamas hold political talks with Palestinian Authority President Mamoud Abbas, which they have been refusing to do. "The Gazans not only accepted it," said Ya'ari, of the cease fire proposal, "they demanded it." The delegation from Damascus, however, reiterated Mashal's rejection of the conditions set down in the Egyptian plan.
At least 16 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Monday, according to Gaza health officials. Doctors at Gaza's central Shifa hospital told local radio that around six Palestinians had been killed and some 30 injured overnight. At least 870 Palestinians have been killed in seventeen days of fighting. The death toll in Gaza since December 27, when Israel first launched airstrikes on the enclave, is reported to have risen to over 920, with over 4,280 injured. Palestinian sources say around half of the victims were civilians.
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