A little less than 48 hours after the difficult battle in Shejaiya in which 9 fighters fell, the IDF continues to investigate the stages that led to the many losses, in order to prevent such an event in the future of fighting.
According to the report of Army Radio reporter Doron Kadosh, the force sent to the scene received information that it was a minimal complex - two buildings with a courtyard between them, one of which is the house of a Hamas operative. In practice, it was a much larger combat complex that included 7 buildings connected in an underground route and allowed the terrorists to move from building to building and surprise the fighters.
In addition, a large amount of weapons were ready as part of the ambush prepared by the terrorists for the moment the fighters arrived. According to Kadosh, the force operated at the location with a dog from the Oketz Unit - and the dog even sat down in one of the buildings adjacent to the compound - which indicates the presence of weapons/war materials nearby - but it is not clear whether the dog was activated in the specific building that the first force entered.
Although the circumstances of the incident are beginning to become clear, the IDF does not know at this stage how many terrorists were active in the area and in the initial scans in the hours after the battle no bodies of terrorists were located in the compound. Only yesterday in the morning, the forces located the body of one terrorist who was killed in the battle, and it is not known what happened to the other terrorists.
According to the estimates, the route of the compound allowed the terrorists who operated in it to move from building to building, and to use the fortified compound to change positions and locations, and to open fire on our forces from different targets as part of the planned ambush they prepared there.
