Resistance tunnel ambush hits Israeli troops, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic atifatada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 566. I'll be covering Yemen. Uh coming up, but let's start in Gaza this week. We'll start by showing you an updated map. I showed you this map last week, but uh the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has updated this map. Uh we are on day 54 of a total siege blockade of Gaza. no food, medicine, medical supplies. Uh no tents. Um nothing nothing has gotten into Gaza uh for 54 days uh now and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight to that siege. You can see on this map uh the purple zones are buffer zone that Israel has set up. Um and the orange is uh displacement orders. So evacuation orders. Um we have 70% of the Gaza Strip right now is either buffer zone or no go zones. Um we have half a million people have been displaced just since March 18th uh when Israel began resumed the war fullon um with the 2 a.m. massacre uh of 400 people including 170 children uh within with 80 strikes in less than 10 minutes to announce the resumption of the war. Um, so you can see by that map that Rafa is completely um, uh, it's a complete no-go zone all through Rafa. Um, I talked to you about the Moore corridor on the show last week. And of course in the center you see the Netzarim corridor. The IDF has taken up to Salahadin road, but the um, western side of the Netarim corridor is a no-go zone. So it is off limits to Palestinians. And this has been a tightening siege. 1.9 million Palestinians are in need of emergency shelter. That means they're living in tents. Um, and the Israeli military in their field reports continues to brag about this. Norah reported on the destruction of the 40 uh heavy machinery vehicles from the Gaza municipality. Um, these are the kind of things that Israel has been bragging about in their field reports. In the field reports this week, they talked about how over the weekend they carried out 150 air strikes in Gaza um over the course of two days, which brings the number to 1,400 air strikes um since March 18th. 1,900 people killed, including 600 children. And this is a war uh against civilians. There's the government um health office talked about 37 aid distribution centers and 28 community kitchens being bombed. This is a a war against civilians. And Netanyahu said this week um that if they end the war today that the Israeli military has lost the war in Gaza. So they don't believe that they're winning this war against civilians. Otherwise, uh Netanyahu wouldn't say things like uh that they lose. And it's not just Netanyahu. There's a significant element of the security establishment that believes that as well. So if we look at the next map, we can see southern Gaza up close. Um, and let me just give you some numbers from this OCHA uh report that this map is from. From the humanitarian cluster, 82% of crop land destroyed, 78% of green houses, 72% of the fishing fleet destroyed, 95% of cattle destroyed, 70% of the agricultural wells have been destroyed. 450,000 housing units destroyed. 88.5% of school buildings from junior kindergarten through university have been destroyed. 92% of children in Gaza are not meeting their nutritional um requirements, their most basic nutritional requirements. 88% of commercial and industrial buildings have been destroyed. 88% of the road network destroyed. Um this is just an attack on the society of Gaza. Um, there was a number of operations in the south this week by the resistance, but they were pre-planned, pre-planted uh, IEDs and mortar attacks along the Morag corridor that Israel is carving. If we look at the next map, we can take a look at northern um, Gaza, which has the same story. You can see the Netsim corridor. There is the purple uh, up till most of the coast and the evacuation zone all the way to the coast. Um, today we're going to be focusing on uh, two areas. uh Tufa which is the old city of uh old Gaza city which is east of Gaza city um and Beth Hanoon in the northeast there in the purple is the buffer zone and in the purple is overlapping with the no-go zone in Beth Hanoon there was a resistance operation up in that purple zone um that we're going to get into today and the next map I showed you this in a map last week the um evacuation of the eastern edge of Tufa, uh, Shuja, and Zetun. And this area is what we're going to start, uh, the resistance port on this week. If we look at number five, we have a series of resistance operations in Tufa because the military came down off the hill. Like I said, as soon as they went into builtup areas, you can see the fighter here with his Yasin in the tunnel. You can see the tunnel uh, the way the tunnel splits there, which makes it very difficult for the Israelis to take these tunnels. You see a tandem 85 strike here on a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer made in uh made in the United States. Uh direct hit. The fighter says, "I lit it up." As he goes back down into the tunnel, um this operation was on Saturday and the video came out on Sunday. So, we're seeing very prompt command and control and the systems uh are working for uh getting these videos out right away. This fighter in the tunnel is saying that we are advancing to achieve a quick operation against the tyrannical enemy in Jabal Sarani. Um, and you can see the these are out on the edge uh of the builtup areas. We'll see in the next couple operations that they moved in um to the city and as soon as they did that, they were hit. We look at the next one, we can see um again, you can see the tandem 85. So, they're still using appropriate weapons. The tandem 85 is used on the D9. Um and um we've seen these kind of iconic shots from the view of the archer throughout the war that take you right to the front lines. If we look at the next one, we have a Yasine strike against a Nom troop carrier. A Nom is a Merk of a tank without its turret. Um it's heavily armored. So you're going to see the fighter emerge here. He's got his Yasine 105, which is an appropriate weapon for the heavily armored tank. You can see the cameraman here is in the same tunnel. um as the uh as the archer as the Essen archer uh to get this and the Israeli military admitted that um these fighters got home returned to their base safely as Casam would say um the Israeli military uh getting hit with these operations and unable to defend against them. Number one is against uh Merkova. So we have uh the complete set and you can see the fighter using here the destroyed uh building as cover. We can see the uh tank commander helmet sticking out of the top of the tank there. Um but this is this is what the destroyed buildings. This is the devastated terrain warfare that's left behind. Um and it gives the fighters uh cover. They don't have jungles or mountains um like other gorillas to use. So they use uh the destroyed rubble. They use their tunnel network to access the destroyed rubble um and carry out a successful operation. And you'll see in the next the picture here, you can see the destroyed building. Um the Israeli military thinks the building the building is flattened, but the tunnel still exists and the fighters can come up and use that. We look at the next slide, you can see um that they had multiple eyes on this tank, you can see the commander, the crewman sticking out of the tank there. So they as soon as they came into builtup areas, as soon as you see other buildings, immediately they're being hit. So that was in Tufa, the old city of Gaza. that happened this week. And then this next operation is a remarkable operation in Beth Hanoon. You can see the fighters emerging here out of a tunnel. This is called the breaking the sword ambush. Um you can see multiple fighters, as many as six in this squad. Um using the uh the thistle overgrowth of the spring to carry out this operation. They're pointing out here that there is an Israeli military position which is connected to their base uh inside Israel. So, this is in the buffer zone, 300 m from the fence. You can see this uh truck, I'll get into that more later, with a truck with the Israeli flag, but now we see the jeep. And so, the fighters have intelligence on this operation and are again using appropriate weaponry, hitting the jeep as it comes out of this. Uh you're going to see that the roof is popped off and the hood is popped off. Um and this Jeep is going to end up uh flipped on its head as these fighters come out of the tunnel. wearing tactical gear. Um, and this is the Beethanoon Battalion. So, this is the place where the war began um in October of 2023. It's also where it ended just before the ceasefire. You can see the fighters there heading back down into the tunnel. This was an operation against the 252nd Division of the IDF whose job is to clear tunnels in this area. you can see a uh pretty spectacular failure in their operations and the success um of the resistance. So this is an internal road. The Israeli military said that this was an internal road. So this is a road that goes from base to base um and they believe they had this area in the buffer zone cleared and Kasam is able to use the tunnel network uh to come out. Maybe we can just show loop it around one more time and see it again. It's pretty remarkable how small the hole in this tunnel is um and the way that this is uh used to access the buffer zone. So now this is a rare operation that's out in the buffer zone. And they've used essentially the spring overgrowth um to as cover like uh like you would in a jungle or uh in the mountains. They're using the um the shrubbery as cover. And you can see they're completely hidden there. They pass on the two civilian vehicles um which only have a single driver in them um and they're targeting the command vehicle that is behind and it was in fact a command vehicle. There was uh three wounded in this operation. The command the company commander who's in the vehicle lost their legs in this operation. So Casam has intelligence above and below ground to execute this. Um and then 30 minutes later after this attack that you're seeing, which is around 100 pm, um about 30 minutes later, the uh IDF sent a rescue force uh uh reinforcements to come and get the jeep and the Casam fighters hit that um hit that uh reinforcements that were uh coming to the scene with a television IED. The TV IED is one of the four core IEDs that uh Casam uses in these operations. So, um a pretty significant operation that was obviously uh noted within the Israeli media. a lot of generals on uh TV, the talking heads, talking about this as a defeat clearly um because they're inside what Israel believes is essentially their own territory at this point, expanding the buffer zone from one base that's on the other side of the of the fence um to a forward position into the buffer zone. Um, and we look at this next picture, you can see just how small the tunnel is that the fighters are coming out of, how difficult it is for Israel to find any of these tunnels. Even the most exaggerated uh estimate of the Israelis is that they've only um been able to deal with 25% of the tunnels. And it's not even clear what that number refers to because when the war started, Israel said there was 500 kilometers of tunnels. Once they started to experience the battlefield, they said there was 700 km. um around December of 2023 and into 2024 they're talking about a thousand kilometers. They have absolutely no idea how many kilometers of tunnels there are. And even if they go back and plug this one offensive tunnel, it's part of a spiderweb's network um that we know from uh Israeli captives um that uh is a spiderweb. So they'll just reconnect. Um and we look at the next picture. Um, you can see in the uh overgrowth there, they've got full concealment um from the spring overgrowth in the milk thistles that they're in there. Um, you can see their tactical gear and you can see in the upper right corner there, there's another fighter um there and you can barely see him camoed in the uh in the undergrowth. Um, there's an IDF observation post 200 meters away from this. So this is a very tactical uh the tactical acumen of this operation requires significant intelligence that suggests that the resistance is all over the Israelis even in this buffer zone area where it's difficult to reach. So uh very significant operation. We look at the next uh um slide. Uh this is this was remarkable to see. So they're using the white pickup truck that's in their night in Israelis nightmares. Um, but they have this massive Israeli flag on it. And the reason why they have this massive Israeli flag is so that the Israelis don't massacre them in these trucks, uh, like they did in Rafa, um, massacred the paramedics in Rafa who came with lights on their trucks. Um but the Israeli military released the investigation into that this week and they talked about how that massacre of the paramedics began um with an ambush that was set up against civilian police in Gaza driving in very similar trucks. So this is the Israelis telling each other not to shoot these trucks. So they carry this massive uh flag and the resistance instead of shooting at this soft uh skinned truck or the truck in front of it with only one driver in it, they wait for the command vehicle. And um you can see that in the next slide. It was the command vehicle. It was an M240 uh Storm, which is an Israeli made light armored vehicle that they you see more often in the West Bank. Um, these are the vehicles they use in the West Bank when they're not using tanks because you can more easily open the doors to shoot at uh kids who are throwing stones at you. Um, when they come into Gaza and they're hit in an area that they believe is their control, Israel is operating in this buffer zone as if this is inside uh inside Israel proper. Um, and they get hit with an an RPG uh, and it flips their uh, vehicle. And like I said, it was the command force that was hit. Um, the company commander uh, lost her legs in this operation along with two other uh, people that lost legs inside the vehicle and then the reinforcements were hit uh, killing at least one and uh, three more wounded in that. So, six casualties in this uh, resistance tunnel operation. If we look at the next slide, we can see another operation in Beth Hanoon. This is on the edge of town. Um, we see the Yasine archer here firing RPGs at a newly established Israeli military position pushing in on the edge of Beth Hanoon. And here you see him firing multiple times. The same archer uh grabs a second round. And we're going to see a third archer firing from an elevated position down onto uh the Israeli position. simultaneously they have um an artillery unit firing mortars um at the position. So the fighters are on the ground in these builtup areas. The Israelis just haven't come to these builtup areas. This is the first week that they have and they're immediately hit with those resistance operations in the Gaza Strip. So that is the resistance report for Gaza. [Music] You