[Ha'aretz] Amos Harel - After a month of reserve duty in Gaza, an IDF paratroop officer told Ha'aretz: "On the professional level, Hamas in the Gaza Strip is nothing like the terrorists we dealt with before." "In all parameters - training, equipment quality, operational discipline - we are facing an army, not gangs," he said. Within two weeks, his unit engaged in three live-fire incidents with Hamas. In one encounter with a Hamas cell west of Khan Yunis, two Hamas men died in a brief, close-range battle. "The fingerprints of Iran and Hizbullah are all over it," a veteran intelligence officer said. "The Palestinians never looked like this." On the bodies of the Hamas fighters the reservists found, in addition to their weapons, night-vision equipment identical to the IDF's.
2007-11-08 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive