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Israel-Hamas war thread


Brisketexan

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19 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

The problem with air is going to be.  Do the Arab nations allow us to use their air space.  Does Bahrain and UAE allow us to conduct missions out of our bases there.  Also with air, we are basically trying to sink a bunch of mid sized fishing boats.   It's expensive if we are trying to hit them with missiles.  You can't break a blockade with just air assets.  

We run ops out of those countries all the time. And with the exception of Qatar they are not fond of Iran, except for money.

 And they have larger assets that are military. And yes you can. 

Or we can pull out and let Arabs/Persians go at it. 

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48 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

We run ops out of those countries all the time. And with the exception of Qatar they are not fond of Iran, except for money.

 And they have larger assets that are military. And yes you can. 

Or we can pull out and let Arabs/Persians go at it. 

Their strategy in Hormuz would be small fast boats because the channel is so narrow.  But yeah I agree.  Let the Persians and the Arabs fight.  I want a 1930s isolationist America at this point.

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40 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Their strategy in Hormuz would be small fast boats because the channel is so narrow.  But yeah I agree.  Let the Persians and the Arabs fight.  I want a 1930s isolationist America at this point.

Well mount some hellfires in Oman. Or some other cool shit the world does not know we have

And ain't gonna happen. They make their $ on other places. 

 

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8 hours ago, Welshy said:

Lalking to some military friends who live in the intel and cyber space, both Colonels (one reserve on active), they don't think anyone has an option other than escalation by steps and hope for a miracle. Not dissimilar to WW2 Bismarckian geo-politics. .

animal-house-bluto.gif

 

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18 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

If Irans goal was to kill US troops.  They would send a few hundred missiles at some chow hall during lunch.  Right now the random missile shots are just to annoy us.  

Agree to an extent - even if it seems like a lot, it's more about them showboating/distracting than trying to actually kill large numbers of US troops.

18 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

If Iran closes the Straits the only way to break that blockade is to send our ships there to break the blockade and confront them directly. Their swarm drones and land based missiles is going to catch one of our ships off guard and put a big hole in it.  

If things escalate to that level, we dump hundreds of cruise missiles into Iranian factories, facilities, missile sites, and we sink their navy.  And if we lob some at their leadership and cause some chaos, then the Iranian youth who have quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) been mixing it up with the religious police over women's dress codes probably see an opening and go for it.

And at that point, Iran will not be able to ship any more missiles or drones to Russia, which has a huge benefit of helping Ukraine out a lot, and it's something we could do without having to get a funding bill passed.  The Russians, as much as they like shit stirred up,  are probably putting a lot of pressure on Iran not to take things too far because of that, because that would reduce the Russian ability to attack Ukrainian cafes, schools, restaurants, hospitals, and apartment buildings.

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Rumors are flying that we have escalated and hit an Iranian-backed militia headquarters, and that militias with Iranian support (define that however you want) then launched a dozen or more missiles/drones at the Conoco oilfields where a lot of Americans are stationed.  Or they launched first and then we hit the HQ.

I have no idea if this is related to those rumors (as in the rumors took this story and ran with it/changed details), as it's within hours of those rumors.

https://apnews.com/article/us-syria-airstrikes-iran-irgc-a84ed69e5b0ef6c9fa18656b72a9fda1

Quote

 The U.S. military conducted airstrikes on two locations in eastern Syria involving Iranian-backed groups, hitting a training location and a weapons facility, according to the Pentagon and U.S. officials. It marks the third time in a bit more than two weeks that the U.S. has retaliated against the militants for what has been a growing number of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

In a statement, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes targeted sites near Abukama and Mayadin and were used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as Iran-backed militias.

Quote

According to the Pentagon, about 56 U.S. personnel have been injured in the attacks in Syria and Iraq, but all have returned to duty. Their injuries are a combination of traumatic brain injury and other minor wounds.

Happy Excuse Me GIF

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Seems a bit suspicious.

5 Special Ops dudes died in the Eastern Med during a "training mission", specifically a "routine air refueling mission".

https://apnews.com/article/us-military-aircraft-crash-mediterranean-31bfeed4b656206885d35f7e4fca133f

ive U.S. servicepeople were killed when a military helicopter crashed over the eastern Mediterranean Sea during a training mission, U.S. officials said Sunday.

The military’s European Command said all five crew members on board were killed when the aircraft went down “during a routine air refueling mission as part of military training.”

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20 hours ago, crash_davis said:

Seems a bit suspicious.

5 Special Ops dudes died in the Eastern Med during a "training mission", specifically a "routine air refueling mission".

https://apnews.com/article/us-military-aircraft-crash-mediterranean-31bfeed4b656206885d35f7e4fca133f

ive U.S. servicepeople were killed when a military helicopter crashed over the eastern Mediterranean Sea during a training mission, U.S. officials said Sunday.

The military’s European Command said all five crew members on board were killed when the aircraft went down “during a routine air refueling mission as part of military training.”

I had an SOC guy on his pentagon rotation who lived near me when I was in Virginia, right around the beginning of the War on Terror, and he intimated that when a bunch of warrant officers die in a random training exercise, unless people specifically saw the wreck, it's usually safe to assume something more is going on. 

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6 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

I had an SOC guy on his pentagon rotation who lived near me when I was in Virginia, right around the beginning of the War on Terror, and he intimated that when a bunch of warrant officers die in a random training exercise, unless people specifically saw the wreck, it's usually safe to assume something more is going on. 

I am always skeptical when we have accidental "training" deaths of servicemen in hot regions. Maybe they got shot out of the sky coming to or going from Gaza. Maybe they were lost in a fire fight on the ground in Gaza.

T&Ps to these guys.

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5 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

I am always skeptical when we have accidental "training" deaths of servicemen in hot regions. Maybe they got shot out of the sky coming to or going from Gaza. Maybe they were lost in a fire fight on the ground in Gaza.

T&Ps to these guys.

Given that no other Spec Ops deaths have recently gathered news, I'd guess they were carrying either CIA or something like Delta and got shot down somewhere they shouldn't have been, diplomatically speaking.  The families of the actual pilots and crew aren't part of the culture of secrecy that surrounds the shooters on the ground. 

Edited by Bateshorn
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3 hours ago, Viper said:

 

If indeed the hospital is just a hospital with refugees sheltering there, then the IDF should just be able to walk in, confirm that there’s no military or terrorist infrastructure, and offer aid. The people getting treatment will undoubtably be better off and no harm will come to them, because who’s going to be offering resistance at a hospital? 

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11 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

Given that no other Spec Ops deaths have recently gathered news, I'd guess they were carrying either CIA or something like Delta and got shot down somewhere they shouldn't have been, diplomatically speaking.  The families of the actual pilots and crew aren't part of the culture of secrecy that surrounds the shooters on the ground. 

"It's not something the state department tells dependents when the battle occurred over the wrong line on some map"

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11 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

Given that no other Spec Ops deaths have recently gathered news, I'd guess they were carrying either CIA or something like Delta and got shot down somewhere they shouldn't have been, diplomatically speaking.  The families of the actual pilots and crew aren't part of the culture of secrecy that surrounds the shooters on the ground. 

Actually we are. Both parents had odd USG jobs. Kids are taught what not to say. It is the dumbass cousins who leak shit. And rarely do the souses and kids really know where the they are operating. We just know the units. we track the news, etc. But specifics are not something talked about. 

And groups like the 160th are constantly training or trying out different shit. 

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6 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Actually we are. Both parents had odd USG jobs. Kids are taught what not to say. It is the dumbass cousins who leak shit. And rarely do the souses and kids really know where the they are operating. We just know the units. we track the news, etc. But specifics are not something talked about. 

And groups like the 160th are constantly training or trying out different shit. 

That’s not what I meant.  I was referring to the traditional bureaucracy around the helicopter crews, within DOD and VA. Equipment has to be accounted for, HR/benefits arranged, grief management systems start to turn. So the military has to have an official response/reaction, hence the public announcement of an “accident.”  Some of the more secretive ground elements have a less obvious “employment” chain, so to speak. 

I understand that SOAR crews don’t discuss their deployments. 

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Troops interrogated people inside Al-Shifa Hospital, an Israeli official says.

The Israeli military forged ahead with its raid on Gaza’s largest hospital Wednesday afternoon, storming the complex and interrogating people inside, in a significant step that could shape the pace and extent of its war with Hamas.

The hospital, Al-Shifa, has become synonymous with Israel’s 40-day effort to wrest control of Gaza from Hamas. Its capture could affect international sentiment about the invasion as well as the continuing negotiations to free the hostages captured by Hamas last month.

Israeli soldiers briefly exchanged fire with gunmen outside the hospital before going in, a senior military official said, but more than 12 hours after it began, the operation appeared more like a police raid than a pitched battle.

The official said that troops were interrogating people inside the hospital and had found weapons, but declined to provide evidence or further details because the operation was ongoing. Little information was available on Wednesday afternoon, as communications were disrupted in Gaza City.

Palestinian officials, the heads of United Nations agencies and some Mideast regional leaders condemned the raid, warning that it risked the lives of Gaza’s most vulnerable.

For years, Israel has said that Hamas built a military command center beneath the hospital, turning its patients into human shields. The Israeli military presented the hospital as a target hours before its troops entered Gaza last month, in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that Israeli officials say killed roughly 1,200 people.

To Palestinians, Al-Shifa Hospital is a civilian institution that for weeks has served as a refuge for thousands of displaced Gazans in addition to the gravely ill and wounded. Hamas and the hospital’s leadership deny its use as a military base. Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7 have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,600 children, according to Gazan health officials — one of the largest tolls in any air campaign this century.

Early on Wednesday,  the army said it had launched “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital.” It said that its goal was not to harm civilians, and that it had sent incubators, Arabic speakers and medical supplies and personnel to join the operation.

By the afternoon, the senior Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing operation, said that soldiers were interrogating people, one of whom may have been a Hamas member, in part of the hospital.

The official said that soldiers had found weapons and evidence of a militant headquarters, but declined to provide further details and said that proof would not be provided until after the raid had ended. Of the brief firefight that he said unfolded at the start of the raid, it was unclear if the gunmen had emerged from inside the hospital itself.

The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said in a statement, also without providing evidence, that the Israeli soldiers had beaten patients and displaced people sheltering at the hospital, and expelled others from the complex. Muhammad Zaqout, a senior health Gazan official, said in a news briefing that the Israeli soldiers had first entered part of a surgery department before later taking control of the radiology and cardiology departments.

Because of the communications disruption, The New York Times could not reach anyone at the hospital to verify either side’s assertions.

Should the Israeli military find a Hamas compound at the hospital and broadcast convincing evidence of the building’s dual use, it could change the global conversation about its operation.

John F. Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said on Tuesday that the United States had its own intelligence supporting Israel’s claim of a militant presence at Al-Shifa. Mr. Kirby also said that the U.S. — Israel’s closest ally — did not want to see “a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, sick people trying to get medical care they deserve are caught in the crossfire.”

After the raid began, Hamas released a statement saying it held Israel’s military and President Biden “fully responsible” for its outcome.

Before the raid, the World Health Organization said that Al-Shifa had ceased to function, and hospital officials had described grim conditions for patients. They said that medicine, anesthetics and fuel had all but run out, shutting down generators and lifesaving equipment. Officials said that roughly three dozen premature babies were at particular risk.

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It sounds like neither Iran nor Hezbollah expected the Hamas attack, and they're not committed to intervening or starting a wider regional war.

Iran's 'Axis of Resistance' against Israel faces trial by fire

DUBAI, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader delivered a clear message to the head of Hamas when they met in Tehran in early November, according to three senior officials: You gave us no warning of your Oct. 7 attack on Israel and we will not enter the war on your behalf.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Ismail Haniyeh that Iran - a longtime backer of Hamas - would continue to lend the group its political and moral support, but wouldn't intervene directly, said the Iranian and Hamas officials with knowledge of the discussions who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely.

The supreme leader pressed Haniyeh to silence those voices in the Palestinian group publicly calling for Iran and its powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah to join the battle against Israel in full force, a Hamas official told Reuters.

Hezbollah, too, was taken by surprise by Hamas' devastating assault last month that killed 1,200 Israelis; its fighters were not even on alert in villages near the border that were frontlines in its 2006 war with Israel, and had to be rapidly called up, three sources close to the Lebanese group said.

"We woke up to a war," said a Hezbollah commander.

The unfolding crisis marks the first time that the so-called Axis of Resistance - a military alliance built by Iran over four decades to oppose Israeli and American power in the Middle East - has mobilised on multiple fronts at the same time.

Hezbollah has engaged in the heaviest clashes with Israel for almost 20 years. Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Yemen's Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Israel.

The conflict is also testing the limits of the regional coalition whose members - which include the Syrian government, Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups from Iraq to Yemen - have differing priorities and domestic challenges.

Mohanad Hage Ali, an expert on Hezbollah at the Carnegie Middle East Center think-tank in Beirut, said Hamas' Oct. 7 assault on Israel had left its axis partners facing tough choices in confronting an adversary with far superior firepower.

"When you wake up the bear with such an attack, it's quite difficult for your allies to stand in the same position as you."

Spoiler

HAMAS PLEA FOR AXIS HELP
Hamas, the ruling group of Gaza, is fighting for its survival against an avenging Israel, which vows to wipe it out and has launched a retaliatory onslaught on the tiny enclave that's killed more than 11,000 Palestinians.

On Oct. 7, Hamas' military commander Mohammed Deif called on its axis allies to join the struggle. "Our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, this is the day when your resistance unites with your people in Palestine," he said in an audio message.

Hints of frustration surfaced in subsequent public statements by Hamas leaders including Khaled Meshaal, who in an Oct. 16 TV interview thanked Hezbollah for its actions thus far but said "the battle requires more" .

Nonetheless, alliance leader Iran won't directly intervene in the conflict unless it is itself attacked by Israel or the United States, according to six officials with direct knowledge of Tehran's thinking who declined to named due to the sensitive nature of the matter.

Instead, Iran's clerical rulers plan to continue using their axis network of armed allies, including Hezbollah, to launch rocket and drone attacks on Israeli and American targets across the Middle East, the officials said.

The strategy is a calibrated effort to demonstrate solidarity for Hamas in Gaza and stretch Israeli forces without becoming engaged in a direct confrontation with Israel that could draw in the United States, they added.

"This is their way of trying to create deterrence," said Dennis Ross, a former senior U.S. diplomat specialising in the Middle East who now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank. "A way of saying: 'Look as long as you don't attack us, this is the way it will remain. But if you attack us, everything changes'."

Iran has repeatedly said that all members of the alliance make their own decisions independently.

The Iranian foreign ministry didn't respond to a request for comment about its response to the crisis and the role of the Axis of Resistance, a term of disputed origin that has been used by Iranian officials to describe the coalition.

Hamas didn't immediately respond to questions sent to Haniyeh's media adviser, while Hezbollah also didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

HEZBOLLAH'S HOME PROBLEMS
Hezbollah, the most powerful group in the axis, boasting 100,000 fighters, has exchanged fire with Israeli forces across the Lebanon-Israel border on an almost daily basis since Hamas went to war with Israel and more than 70 of its fighters have been killed.

Yet, like its backer Iran, Hezbollah has avoided an all-out confrontation.

The group has calibrated its attacks in a way that has kept the violence largely contained to a narrow strip of territory at the border, even as it has escalated those strikes in recent days, according to the people familiar with its thinking.

One of the sources said Hamas wanted Hezbollah to strike deeper into Israel with its massive arsenal of rockets but that Hezbollah believed this would lead Israel to lay waste to Lebanon without halting its attack on Gaza.

Hezbollah, which is also a political movement deeply involved in Lebanese government affairs, knows Lebanon can ill afford another war with Israel, more than four years into a financial crisis that has driven up poverty and hollowed out the country's governing institutions.

Lebanon took years to rebuild from the 2006 war, during which Israeli bombardment pounded the Hezbollah-controlled south of the country and destroyed swathes of its stronghold in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a Nov. 3 speech that Hamas had kept its attack on Israel a secret from its allies and this had ensured its success and not "upset anyone" in the axis. Hezbollah attacks at the Israeli border were unprecedented and amounted to "a real battle", he said.

AMERICA COMES UNDER FIRE
The United States, too, is keen to avoid the war spiralling beyond Gaza. Having fought two costly and ill-fated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades, it now finds itself bankrolling Ukraine's defence against Russia's invasion.

President Joe Biden has so far sought to limit the U.S. role in the Gaza crisis mostly to ensuring military aid to Israel. He has also moved two aircraft carriers and fighter jets to the eastern Mediterranean, partly as a warning to Tehran.

The temperature is rising; at least 40 drone and rocket attacks have been launched at U.S. forces by axis militias in Iraq and Syria since the Gaza war began in response to American support for Israel, according to the Pentagon. U.S. officials say America has conducted three sets of retaliatory strikes against facilities in Syria used by militias linked to Iran.

On Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed the risk of another major front being opened in the conflict.

"What we've seen throughout this conflict, throughout this crisis, is tit-for-tat exchanges between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israeli forces," he told a news conference in Seoul. "No one wants to see another conflict break out in the north."

ISRAEL LOOKS TO THE NORTH
Austin emphasised the need to avoid any regional escalation when he spoke to his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant over the weekend, according to a readout of the call.

The Israeli prime minister's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment for this article.

Two Israeli security sources, who declined to be identified, said that Israel didn't seek any spread of hostilities but added that the country was prepared to fight on new fronts if needed to protect itself. They said security officials deemed the most potent immediate threat to Israel came from Hezbollah.

Enmity runs deep between Israel and Iran.

Iran does not recognise Israel's existence, while Israel has long threatened military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to curb its disputed nuclear activity.

In the current crisis, real politik may prevail for Tehran, according to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank.

"Iran has shown a four-decade commitment to fighting America and Israel without entering into direct conflict. The regime's revolutionary ideology is based on opposition to America and Israel, but its leaders are not suicidal, they want to stay in power."

 

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7 minutes ago, Viper said:

IDF released a video of some of the things they found in al shifa so far

 

 

 

 

Probably don't want to read the comments on the IDF video where a lot of skeptics about the Hamas command post being underneath the hospital unless you're looking to get pissed.

Not a whole lot of stuff yet, to be honest, but I wouldn't think you'd want a lot of metal guns around sitting around MRIs while in operation. So, Hamas likely didn't use that area a bunch.

One other thing to note is that the MRI compound is not one of the parts of the hospital complex where the tunnels have been claimed to be located (red on this aerial).

Still early.

NYPICHPDPICT000071945682.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1024 

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This is nothing against Israel but when you see headlines like “IDF finds major command center under hospital”. When you say command center, I guess I expected more than one laptop and some cds. I’d think of multiple computers, phones, plenty of communication tech….I’m not saying what they are saying is wrong but finding some combat bags hidden and some weapons…I don’t know. I agree they shouldn’t be in the hospital but I was expecting a lot more “evidence”-I know it’s early so more will come out but to the poster above that said wait until more “worse” evidence is found is accurate. I just felt when I would see a Hana’s command center I’d be like yup I can see how this was all done….that was far from it. Sure, the hostage stuff with the curtains on a wall and the list, yeah that’s terrible and sadly probably where people were held but still, not getting “command center hub” that’s blasted all over the web and media. 

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yeah, that... doesn't seem like a lot? 🤔 none of that stuff should be there, but it doesn't seem like a giant weapons cache or explosives or a command post, more like a couple guys were stationed there, or just their stash.

it doesn't sound like there was much resistance so that's good, hopefully the hospital sustained minimal damage and can continue operating. i almost hope for IDF's sake that they find more, especially tunnels.

i guess after all the build up and back and forth i expected it to be more like this...

platoon-booby-trap.gif.4e8a542c115f4ec3ee1f5c3cb250ae36.gif

platoon-elias.gif.4b910ccaa569aa5b64b22e04152655a2.gif

i may have watched too many war movies 😝

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7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

With the extreme and calculated risk for the the IDF in storming the hospital, it has a highly likely they had good intel about the weapons and housing of Hamas militants. The downside risks on the world stage is high. Staging a weapons find like a bad cop stashing cocaine in your car would be a very bad play with long term consequences for Israel. It's okay to be somewhat skeptical but it's also okay to use logic. When has Hamas ever not given a crap about fellow Palestinians?  Especially when their view is that all should martyr themselves for a "pure" Islam?

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17 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah I understand it's coming completely from one side in the conflict so I mentioned IDF in the text. I figure everyone here can make their own decision to believe them, be skeptical, or just discount them completely. 

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Small amount of weapons. Enough to cause a bit of chaos on the IDF, and I wonder if they were moved by Hamas via tunnels. Yeah, not what was advertised unless more emerges. Either way both sides are going to argue. Pro-IDF, see there were weapons. Pro-Hamas, see IDF made it up. 

One interesting note. The bandages in plastic bags tossed in a corner where weapons were found. The word from Hamas the hospital had no supplies. And images from other sources show it was chaotic, but organized. 

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12 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Small amount of weapons. Enough to cause a bit of chaos on the IDF, and I wonder if they were moved by Hamas via tunnels. Yeah, not what was advertised unless more emerges. Either way both sides are going to argue. Pro-IDF, see there were weapons. Pro-Hamas, see IDF made it up. 

One interesting note. The bandages in plastic bags tossed in a corner where weapons were found. The word from Hamas the hospital had no supplies. And images from other sources show it was chaotic, but organized. 

I think it's still early and the hospital complex looks pretty big. I'm guessing it's going to take some time to carefully explore everything. 

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