Operation Solid Rock: Day 3Hamas’s rocket force commander killed, Iron Dome’s effectiveness impresses

This is the third day of Operation Solid Rock, the third war between Israel and Hamas since Hamas forcibly took control over the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority in summer 2007 — the first two rounds were Operation Cast Lead (27 December 2008 - 18 January 2009) and Operation Pillar of Defense, aka Pillar of Cloud (14-22 November 2012).

Here is a summary of the first three days of war:

• In a precise targeted attack, Israel has killed Iman Siam, the commander of Hamas’s rocket and missile force. He is the most senior Hamas military leader to have been killed in a targeted strike by Israel
• Hamas and a few smaller Islamist organizations launched 255 rockets and missiles into Israel
• Most of the rockets fell in empty fields, but between a quarter and a third (about 75 rockets) were heading toward populated areas. Of those, Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted seventy – a success rate of about 95 percent
• Today (Thursday) Hamas has so far launched seventy-three rockets, of which twenty were heading toward populated areas and intercepted
• The Israel Air Force (IAF) has destroyed more than 800 targets in the Gaza Strip, dropping nearly 600 tons of explosives on these targets
• Among the targets destroyed were the homes of more than sixty senior military commanders of Hamas
• About a dozen senior military operatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were killed in targeted attacks
• For the first time, Hamas rockets reached as far north as Haifa, and as far east as Dimona
• Hamas also launched three missiles toward the Israeli nuclear reactor in Dimona, but the missiles were intercepted by Iron Dome
• So far, eighty Palestinians were killed, about a third of them civilians, including women and twenty-two children
• There have been no Israeli casualtie
• Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that right now talks about ceasefire “are not on the agenda”
• Netanyahu also noted that Israel’s strategy in a war against a terrorist organization is complicated by the fact that “Israel cannot do what the Russians did in Chechnya” (in two rounds of war against Chechen separatists – December 1994-August 1996 and August 1999-May 2000 — Russia killed about 200,000 Chechen civilians in indiscriminate bombing – or flattening – of Chechen cities and villages)