IDF begins clearing 'Kassam perimeter'
After two days of Operation Hot Winter - intense IDF activity on the outskirts of northern Gaza towns - Grad missile fire eased off on Sunday, although shorter-range Kassam rockets fired from the Strip continued to pound the western Negev.
Givati Brigade infantry backed up by Armored Corps battalions began to search residential and public buildings in the "Kassam perimeter," the security zone over which the IDF first began to assert control a day earlier. Sunday's operations focused on the agricultural areas closest to the Gaza security fence, and the easternmost portions of Beit Hanun, Jabalya and Gaza City's Sajaya neighborhood.
It is from this eastern perimeter that many Kassam cells have operated in recent months, as the proximity to the western Negev maximizes the limited range of the home-made rockets.
But IDF sources said the much larger Grad missiles, brought in via Sinai, were being fired from farther inside heavily populated areas of the Gaza Strip, including from Gaza City itself.
Soldiers reported that the enemy in northern Gaza was using a wide range of weapons, including improvised explosive devices, anti-tank missiles and snipers. Booby-traps were found in some of the houses, and in at least one case, soldiers discovered a weapons storehouse inside a mosque.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204473062896&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
After two days of Operation Hot Winter - intense IDF activity on the outskirts of northern Gaza towns - Grad missile fire eased off on Sunday, although shorter-range Kassam rockets fired from the Strip continued to pound the western Negev.
Givati Brigade infantry backed up by Armored Corps battalions began to search residential and public buildings in the "Kassam perimeter," the security zone over which the IDF first began to assert control a day earlier. Sunday's operations focused on the agricultural areas closest to the Gaza security fence, and the easternmost portions of Beit Hanun, Jabalya and Gaza City's Sajaya neighborhood.
It is from this eastern perimeter that many Kassam cells have operated in recent months, as the proximity to the western Negev maximizes the limited range of the home-made rockets.
But IDF sources said the much larger Grad missiles, brought in via Sinai, were being fired from farther inside heavily populated areas of the Gaza Strip, including from Gaza City itself.
Soldiers reported that the enemy in northern Gaza was using a wide range of weapons, including improvised explosive devices, anti-tank missiles and snipers. Booby-traps were found in some of the houses, and in at least one case, soldiers discovered a weapons storehouse inside a mosque.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204473062896&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
