The correspondent of 20 Heures, Agnès Vahramian, was able to enter the Gaza Strip for the first time.
Continuous, heavy bombing and ground fighting for several days. On Wednesday, November 8, the Israeli army increased its hold on the northern Gaza Strip. A team from France 2’s “20 Heures” was able to board a tank with the Israeli military on the condition that the exact destination was not revealed. There are only two to three kilometers left, but they will be covered in armored vehicles.
Through a tiny opening, journalist Agnès Vahramian sees the security barrier that separates Israel from Gaza. “We are invading Gaza and taking the exact same route that the terrorists took on October 7 to get to Israel,” she testified.
In Betanoun, the closest town to Israel, the scale of the destruction and the sounds of explosions are impressive. Air strikes, artillery… The war took its toll on the buildings and streets of this town in the north of the Gaza Strip. The army can only advance with armored bulldozers.
Hamas “prepared the ground for our arrival”
“According to our calculations, there are explosives, traps in every second or third building,” said Colonel Ivry Elbaz, who leads a brigade of 3,000 men. One of these traps exploded in a burning house. Hamas knew that the Israeli army would come through here to invade the Gaza Strip. “I was very surprised at how they had prepared the ground for our arrival,” the soldier continues.
The residents moved south. Colonel Ivry Elbaz shows the France 2 team a hole in the ground. A Hamas tunnel, he explains, “in the middle of civilian houses,” near a school. How far does this underground path go? The colonel shrugs his shoulders in silence. We must first take cover and go back to Israel.