Sunday, 4 January 2009
St.- Sgt. Dvir Emanuelof, 22, from Givat Ze'ev died of wounds sustained in a mortar shell attack near Jabalya in the Gaza Strip on Sunday.
The IDF said that the Golani Brigade soldier's death was the first fatality in the ground operation in Gaza, which was launched Saturday. The families of Emanuelof, and the soldier in a critical condition, had both been notified, according to the IDF.
Emanuelof's funeral will be held on Sunday night at 11 p.m., at the military cemetery on Mt. Herzl, Jerusalem.
A total of 35 soldiers have been wounded since the IDF ground operation began on Saturday. One was in a critical condition, three were moderately wounded, and the rest lightly. Troops had encountered fierce resistance from Hamas forces entrenched in fortifications just over the border.
Most of the wounded were taken to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba for treatment.
IDF forces have not yet entered urban areas, according to Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu, the chief army spokesman. He warned, however, that the operation was not a "school trip" and would be long and demanding.
By Sunday afternoon, the IDF had divided the Gaza Strip into two segments, in a move apparently aimed at cutting off the flow of arms, supplies and fighters to the northern Strip, as tanks were seen in the area of former Israeli settlement Netzarim and troops reportedly reached the outskirts of Gaza City.
Eyewitnesses told Arab media that IDF tanks and bulldozers were seen in the area between Gaza City and Netzarim. The British Sky News channel also reported that some 150 IDF tanks had arrived in the Netzarim area.
Also Sunday afternoon, senior Hamas terrorist Hussam Hamdan, who was in charge of Grad-type rocket launches into Beersheba and Ofakim, was killed in an IAF strike on Khan Yunis.
Another senior Hamas terrorist, Muhammad Hilo, was also killed in the same airstrike. Hilo was in charge of the Hamas special forces in Khan Yunis.
Mohamad Shalpoch, a member of Hamas's commando forces, was also targeted in Jabalya attacks on Sunday, the IDF said. It was unclear whether Shalpoch was killed in the strike.
Dozens of Hamas gunmen have been killed by IDF troops. Gaza health officials said around 20 civilians had also died in airstrikes and shelling, including a 12-year-old girl, five members of the same family, and another eight civilians killed by a tank shell in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. The deaths brought the total death toll in the Gaza Strip since last Saturday to more than 500.
Residents of the small northern Gaza community of al-Attatra said soldiers moved from house to house by blowing holes through walls. Most of the houses were unoccupied, their residents having already fled.
The IAF bombed some 45 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight, including seven tunnels, several mortar firing cells and Kassam rocket launching cells.
IDF sources said that the immediate goal was to conquer territory in northern Gaza, including rocket launch sites. Soldiers from the Armored Corps, Engineering Corps, and Paratroopers, Givati, Golani brigades were participating in the fighting, with at least four brigades' worth of troops inside the Gaza Strip.
The sources said that a majority of the rockets fired into Beersheba and Ashdod were launched from the northern Gaza Strip.
One of the major aims of the operation was also to deliver a serious blow to the Hamas military wing, which the IDF estimated had not been severely weakened under the air campaign.
The IDF would not enter Gaza City or the refugee camps, defense officials said, and it was likely that on Monday - when French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives in the region and international pressure is expected to escalate - Israel would begin scaling back the operation.
"We know there will be dangers, difficulties and victims... It must be said that the ground operation entails dangers to the lives of soldiers," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv Saturday night. "We must end the hostile actions against Israel... We will not abandon our citizens."
"This will be a lengthy operation and there will likely be casualties on our side," a senior defense official said. "But our mission is to defend the home front. The purpose is to destroy Hamas's infrastructure and impair its ability to fire rockets into Israel."
Before the ground incursion began, IDF artillery, for the first time in several years, began pounding open areas in northern Gaza to "soften up" the area and destroy land mines and Hamas fortifications.
Terrorists using civilians as human shields would bear full responsibility for their fate, the army warned.
"Anyone who hides a terrorist or weapons in his house is considered a terrorist," but "the residents of Gaza are not the target of the operation," the IDF Spokesman's Office said.
The army reiterated that the operation was in line with the "decisions of the security cabinet," saying that this new stage was "part of the IDF's overall operational plan, and would continue on the basis of ongoing situational assessments by the IDF General Staff."
The cabinet also approved the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, mostly from combat units, but also from the Home Front Command, with several thousand emergency orders issued already on Saturday night.
Earlier, the army dropped leaflets in downtown Gaza City ordering people off the streets. The warnings were followed by the air strikes.
