Documentation of the activities of the 162nd Division forces in the Gaza Strip. November 1, 2023/IDF Spokesperson
Engineering forces began a large-scale engineering operation deep inside the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning, with the aim of mopping up the area entered by the IDF and blowing up the shafts and tunnels in those areas. This is the largest operation of this kind since the maneuver began.
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In all the IDF reserve brigades that entered the Gaza Strip, engineering forces (plassim), specializing in the removal and destruction of mines and IEDs, and teams of the Yahalam unit specializing in handling tunnels, were incorporated. Now, the engineering forces will employ various types of robots, using various means of sabotage to destroy shafts and tunnels, detonate IEDs waiting for forces, and kill terrorists. The forces will examine some of the shafts in order to understand the branches of the tunnels and see if some of them lead to Gaza.
"Maybe in the short term they managed to tail us, to sting by firing from shafts, but after we established control on the ground, the engineering operation began," LaValle said. Senior officer in the Southern Command on the beginning of the major engineering operation. "We will collapse the shafts and tunnels on them. It will become an extermination zone. They made a mistake, they chose an inescapable territory. They will die in the tunnels."
IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, this week/IDF Spokesperson
In the first days of the entry, the forces had difficulty dragging the "hijacker" – a break-in device mounted on armored personnel carriers designed to destroy 100-meter-long roads where IEDs and mines had been planted by Hamas. Engineering officers in the Southern Command praised a reserve officer who, while waiting for the maneuver, developed a new and effective means linking the APC to the "hijacker" in order to bring it efficiently and quickly to enemy territory.
The Southern Command clarified that so far engineering elements have blown up more than <> tunnel shafts. This figure does not include hundreds of shafts and tunnels destroyed in Israeli air strikes.
- More on the subject:
- Gaza Strip
- Gaza War
- Iron Sword War
- Combat Engineering
- Tunnels