Israel to flood Gaza City with ‘unprecedented’ number of booby-trapped vehicles: Report
The Cradle | September 17, 2025
The Israeli military is set to deploy an “unprecedented” number of remote-controlled armored personnel carriers (APCs) loaded with explosives into Gaza City as part of operation “Gideon’s Chariots 2,” Hebrew news outlet Walla reported on 17 September.
This is part of the first stage of a three-stage plan drafted by Major General Yaniv Asor to “conquer” the largest city in the strip, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain trapped or refuse to be displaced.
“The ‘fire phase’ focuses on the massive destruction of terrorist infrastructure — mainly at night — using various methods, including above and below ground robots,” Walla reports, citing military sources that said “Gaza has never been hit like this before. This is only the second night.”
Referred to as “booby-trapped robots” in Gaza, the decommissioned APCs are rigged with explosives and remotely driven deep into urban areas before being detonated, causing massive explosions and widespread destruction.
“The Israeli army sends the robots near our homes, which stay parked there to terrorize us. The army doesn’t detonate them right away, waiting for fear to push us to flee. When people don’t leave, the army detonates the robots, regardless of whether there are civilians in the area,” Abdulwahhab Ismail, a resident of the Saftawi area in northwestern Gaza, told Mondoweiss last month.
The Israeli military calls this practice “suicide APCs.” According to Walla, Tel Aviv has stationed a large number of these vehicles outside the Gaza separation line.
“Acting on orders from IDF Southern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Yaniv Asor, the deployment of these vehicles has surged, with officers in the field reporting that their usage has tripled. Forces on the ground have testified to the movement of hundreds of these explosive-laden APCs toward the Gaza border,” the Jerusalem Post reported earlier this month.
In August, reports in Hebrew media revealed that Israeli arms companies were planning to expand production of tanks and APCs with a budget exceeding $1.3 billion.
At least 100 booby-trapped robots were used in densely populated areas inside Gaza between 13 August and 3 September alone, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
“Before now, the army used to blow up one or two buildings with the robots. Now they destroy dozens of buildings at once. Robots and warplanes are working together to destroy every place in Gaza City,” Ismail described.
Thursday’s report from Walla added that the “second stage” of the southern command’s plan calls for the occupation of Gaza City by the invading troops, while the third stage “is currently classified as high security and combines military capabilities that we have not yet seen in the Israeli war repertoire.”
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