Israel Matzav: How IDF's Duvdevan unit prevented a hostage situation

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

How IDF's Duvdevan unit prevented a hostage situation

There is much we still don't know about the IDF's Operation Protective Edge, but here's one story that's come out involving the elite Duvdevan (Cherry) Unit (a unit that dresses as Arabs to be able to move among the terrorists) and a potential hostage situation.

A company of the unit headed by a captain, identified only by the initial S, had infiltrated into a 12-building compound of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization where it was searching for rocket-launch sites, weapons and terror tunnels. The company quickly realized the compound was full of active terrorists, travelling though underground tunnels.

Suddenly through the sporadic gunfire in the background a loud explosion was heard, and members of the unit reported that an army bulldozer had run over a planted explosive, with terrorists firing on the trapped driver from several directions and pinning him down.

Fearing an abduction of the driver, captain S and reserves communications combat soldier A broke off from the tunnel-finding mission to race towards the bulldozer, reports Walla!.

...

Climbing on the vehicle despite the incoming gunfire, S told the Hebrew-language news source that he saw the driver was severely wounded. At that point, S says "in parallel I get information on an anti-tank rocket terror cell in the surroundings. We identify the cell; it opens fire on us, and suddenly I hear a shout: 'grenade.'"

After taking cover, S notes he and A opened fire at the terrorist who lobbed the grenade at them, while still struggling to free the trapped and heavily wounded driver. "I was afraid he would be abducted by the cell. It was very important to me to get him home. I didn't think about anything else, I worked like a machine," stated the special ops commander.

After finally getting the driver out, deputy commander Y of the company arrived on the scene with a stretcher. Unfortunately the driver, first Sgt. Moshe Davinu hy''d of Jerusalem, did not survive the critical wounds inflicted on him by the explosive.

Y told Walla! of events from his perspective: "I stood in a doorway, looked out and saw a terrorist 15 meters (50 feet) away from me pull out a Kalashnikov. He threw a grenade and fired at S. I placed my sights on him and fired."

Once Davinu was on the stretcher, Y relates "while they were firing on us we ran between houses almost 200 meters (650 feet) in swampy sea sand. We made a sprint, it was really difficult."

After their breakneck sprint through soggy sand, the Duvdevan fighters evacuated the wounded and were taken back to Israeli territory in an APC. However the reprieve was brief; quickly they were back in the heart of the fighting, infiltrating a terrorist hideout and engaging in a fierce firefight with a terror cell. When the smoke cleared eight terrorists were dead and ten Duvdevan troops wounded.

Read the whole thing.

For those who have forgotten, the IDF will do just about anything to avoid another Gilad Shalit-style hostage situation.

Labels: Duvdevan, Gaza, IDF, Operation Protective Edge, Palestinian Islamic Jihad