The IDF is burning down the homes of terrorists in Gaza in recent weeks amid a shortage in explosives. During the last two months, according to testimonies, IDF soldiers have set fire to hundreds of homes belonging to Hamas terrorist in the Strip. What started as a local initiative of the soldiers in the Shijaiyah district became practice.
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The military censor prevented the release of the fact that there was an unusual number of houses burned after troops found in them armed terrorists or weapons. Without enough mines or explosive charges to blow them up, the IDF must resort to other methods when dismantling Hamas infrastructure. Initially, when soldiers began burning the houses, the senior commanders ordered them to stop, "because we are not like the terrorists who burned our houses on the October 7."
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Burning houses during the evening to show Gazans where the IDF is operating
(Photo: Yoav Zitun)
At the same time, this method of eliminating Hamas infrastructure has spread but not to all areas of the Strip: There are divisions whose commanders forbade it altogether, while other officers pointed out to the double importance of setting fire to the houses: "We do this towards the end of the day, so that the smoke can be seen far away in the Gaza Strip and would deter the Gazan population. In addition, these are totally incriminated houses, and in every such house we record weapons or terrorists we have killed. When we say that in every house we meet an enemy, it is not a cliché."
The officers said that there are at least tens if not hundreds of thousand of houses and buildings, used by Hamas. "In the Gaza Strip there are cities, not villages, and in these cities there are large neighborhoods with buildings of 5, 10, and 15 stories like in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Be'er Sheva, and they are used by Hamas. In this sense, the Gaza Strip is not a small area but an organized and urban terror state."
According on one soldier the fighting forces developed a technique when they set the buildings on fire, which includes the concentration of the furniture in the center of the living room, in order to maximize the damage to the structure.
It should be noted that the IDF has so far used hundreds of tons of explosives of different types to destroy terrorist structures and mainly to destroy Hamas underground tunnels and bases, most of which were enormous. In recent weeks, the IDF purchased tens of thousands of IEDs and mines for this purpose. This ever growing need includes demolition of hundreds of Palestinian buildings in the buffer zone which were used for intelligence gathering as to fire at the Israeli side of the border.
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IDF burns houses only after they have become completely incriminated
(Photo: Yoav Zitun)
Lately, the IDF has begun destroying staircases to save costs. The IDF started demolishing just staircases in suspicious or incriminated houses, to prevent the terrorists from using them to shoot at troops or surveille their movements. from the upper floors.
"Demolition and destruction of buildings are done with approved and appropriate means. Actions taken in other ways during the war would be reviewed," the IDF Spokesperson said