[Al Jazeera] Palestinian fighters in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood conducted a “complex and multi-stage attack” on Israeli forces on Tuesday, which involved an ambush and the use of “thermobaric rockets”, war monitors report.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) forces first targeted a unit of Israeli soldiers in a building in Shujayea with a powerful thermobaric rocket but then redirected their attack at an Israeli rapid reaction force that was deployed to the firefight.
Palestinian fighters used “an explosively formed penetrator, rocket-propelled grenades, and additional thermobaric rockets” against the reaction force, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) said in their latest Gaza field report.
The combined ambush and attack by Hamas and PIJ was one of at least 10 attacks on Tuesday against Israeli forces currently operating in Shujayea, and indicates that Hamas has “at least partially reconstituted” its forces since Israeli ground troops were last in the area in April, the US-based defence think tanks report. |