October 7 Reveals Its Secrets… Details of the 20-Minute Battle
The attack of October 7 continues to reveal its secrets, and among its episodes, the “20-Minute Battle” in Western Negev, Israel, stands out.
While Hamas fighters were storming Israeli settlements on the morning of October 7, 2023, the residents of the town of Ein Hubsur armed themselves and exchanged information via a WhatsApp group, managing to thwart a major attack, according to the newspaper “Yedioth Ahronoth.”
In the year preceding the October attack, Ein Hubsur faced dozens of thefts and agricultural raids, revealing the weakness of security forces’ grip on Israel’s peripheries.
In response, the residents formed a ready and trained civilian unit. During the October attack, this unit faced a Hamas force superior in both numbers and weaponry.
Details
The Israeli newspaper reports that “that morning, a group of 16 members from Hamas’s elite unit, the ‘elite of the elite,’ deviated from their original target — the Home Front Command base and Unit 8200 at the Orrim military complex — and instead entered the town of Ein Hubsur, a large agricultural settlement in Western Negev with more than 1,600 residents.”
The attackers arrived in a Toyota truck loaded with RPG launchers, a Dragunov sniper rifle, machine guns, and communication devices linked to Hamas’s operations room, while two of them arrived on a motorcycle.
The newspaper noted that the exchange of fire between Hamas members and the town’s residents lasted only twenty minutes before army and border police forces intervened.
According to the newspaper, at least two Hamas fighters were killed in the operation, later named the “20-Minute Battle,” with the possibility of additional casualties whose number has not been officially confirmed.
This incident is part of 44 investigations into the October 7 battles in the bases and towns surrounding Gaza, while other investigations into the fighting on nearby roads are still ongoing.
The results of a comprehensive review, led by retired Major General Sami Turgeman and focusing on structural failures in the southern command, the General Staff, and their relations with the political leadership, are also awaited, according to the same source.
