8/12/2023–|Last updated: 12/8/202311:21 PM (Mecca time)
The military correspondent for the Israeli “Walla” news site, Amir Boukhbout, described the Shuja’iya neighborhood, located east of Gaza City, as “one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the Middle East,” after he saw what the Israeli army faced in the neighborhood of missiles, wells, tunnels, and mines installed by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing. The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
Buchbout, who accompanied the Israeli soldiers in Shujaiya, conveyed the extent of the Israeli soldiers’ surprise when they entered the neighborhood, as the deputy commander of the 188th Brigade of the Army, Lieutenant Colonel Oded, told the soldiers that the Palestinian militants “did not refrain from building wells and tunnels everywhere. We have already found some in the area, and in We appreciate there are a lot of them here.”
High alert
“The Merkava tank slows down and stops next to what was previously a 3-story building,” Bakhbout wrote in a report published today, Friday. “As for its current condition, the word building is a kind of compliment, as it almost touches the soil of the Shujaiya neighborhood.”
Bukhbat described the condition of the soldiers during the storming, saying, “The deputy commander of the 188th Brigade stands between the tanks and buildings surrounded by soldiers carrying weapons, and they are in a state of extreme alert, and he addresses them: You never know where an armed squad or an armed drone will appear.”
Boukhbout conveys the situation of Lieutenant Colonel Oded as he raised his voice in front of the soldiers: “There is an enemy here, anti-tank missiles here, there are mortar shells here, and there are suicide bombers.”
Boukhbout explains, “The soldiers could barely hear the lieutenant colonel’s words amid the echoes of the continuous explosions, the noise of tank machine guns, and the constantly operating artillery batteries.”
The military correspondent pointed out that the combat team of the 188th Brigade, which has been present in Shujaiya since last Monday, includes an engineering battalion, a paratrooper battalion, an infantry battalion, and an armored battalion.
“The strongest brigades”
Boukhbout quoted what he described as “a veteran security man who knows the neighborhood like the back of his hand,” who told him, “Remember well what I’m telling you. There is a very strong battalion hiding in Shuja’iya, and it is one of the strongest battalions in the military arm of the Hamas movement.”
Boukhbout considered that this “represents a challenge to the Israeli army,” comparing this description to what the Israeli army faced in the “Devouring Storm” battle in the summer of 2014, when the Golani Brigade carried out a ground maneuver in Shuja’iya, saying, “It looks as if the brigade entered with its head against the wall, and pushed “A high price for that.”
Boukhbout added, “Shuja’iyya is known historically as a place where evil and cruelty abound, and there they kidnapped the soldier Shaul Aaron.”
He continued, “Any movement in the sky or slight noise translates into suspicious looks and the movement of rifle barrels, fearing that there might be an attack drone belonging to Hamas.”
It is noteworthy that the Al-Qassam Brigades announced yesterday, Thursday, the sniping of two Israeli soldiers in Shujaiya, in addition to the destruction of 79 Israeli military vehicles within 72 hours.