Israel air force pummels Hamas forces, blows up 40 Philadelphi tunnels
DEBKAfile Special Report
December 28, 2008, 9:35 PM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile's military sources report that Hamas kept a reserve fighting force in and around the smuggling tunnels they dug under the Philadelphi border strip between the Gaza Strip and Egyptian Sinai. Sunday, Dec. 28, the Israeli air force struck 40 tunnels between 3 and 15 meters deep – some packed with explosives or fuel stocks - on Day 2 of the Israeli air offensive against Gaza. The heavy bombs triggered secondary blasts and fires in a chain reaction, severing Hamas' pipeline for smuggled arms from Iran and Sinai through Egyptian Sinai.
This was the second major Israeli air force operation after bombers, helicopters and drones blasted hundreds of Hamas military sites Saturday. Palestinian losses stand now at over 280 dead, most of them Hamas fighting men.
A crowd of Palestinians trying to flee the Gaza Strip were stopped by heavy machine gun fire from Egyptian forces.
To the north of the embattled enclave, a Palestinian Qassam missile exploded near the Israeli armored units and Merkava tanks massing outside the Gaza Strip border fence, awaiting an order to cross in. No one was hurt. In the last two days, Israel has called up 6,500 reservists for the Gaza operation.
Sunday, too, 20 Qassam missiles and Grad rockets were fired from Gaza. Their radius has been extended to nearly 40 km by the new Iran-made Grad Katyushas which reached the big port-city of Ashdod and Yavne for the first time. Two civilians were injured by one of the four projectiles which hit Ashkelon.
Chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi reported to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem that the first wave of air strikes in Gaza Saturday destroyed 50 percent of the "missile pits" which Hamas had scattered around the territory, some containing missiles operated by remote control.
This would partly explain the trickle of missiles fired from Gaza compared with the massive expected in the wake of Israel's Gaza operation. The presence of Israeli bombers and reconnaissance drones aloft in Gaza's skies most of the time is another deterrent. But Israeli war planners do not yet rule this out. Hamas still has plenty of fight.
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- the way Egypt stops illegal crossing!
Israel
Egypt
Hamas
Palestinians
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