Israeli air strikes kill 25 in Gaza

FE Team | Published: April 21, 2025 00:04:32

Picture shows an unmanned bulldozer —Collected

GAZA CITY, Apr 20 (AFP): Gaza's civil defence agency reported that Israeli air strikes since dawn on Sunday have killed at least 25 people across the Gaza Strip, including women and children.
Israel resumed its aerial and ground assault on Gaza on March 18, reigniting fighting after a two-month ceasefire that had paused more than 15 months of war in the coastal territory.
"Since dawn today, the occupation's air strikes have killed 20 people and injured dozens more, including children and women across the Gaza Strip," Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency told AFP.
In a separate statement later, the agency reported that five people were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a group of civilians in eastern Rafah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday vowed to continue the war and bring home the remaining hostages held in Gaza without yielding to Hamas's demands.
Israel's unmanned bulldozers
breaking ground in Gaza war
At first glance, there is nothing unusual about the bulky bulldozer turning up soil at a testing site in central Israel, but as it pulled closer it became clear: the driver's cabin is eerily empty.
This is the Robdozer, a fortified engineering vehicle manned remotely, and in this case operated from a military expo halfway across the globe in Alabama.
Army engineers and military experts say that the Robdozer -- the robotic version of Caterpillar's D9 bulldozer -- is the future of automated combat.
The Israeli military has used D9 for years to carry out frontline tasks like trowelling roads for advancing troops, removing rubble and flattening terrain.
But since war in Gaza broke out in October 2023 and later in Lebanon, the Israeli military has increasingly deployed this robotic version in a bid to enhance its field operations and reduce the risks to its troops.
"The idea is to eliminate the person from the cockpit of the dozer," said Rani, whose team at the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries developed the Robdozer.
During the Gaza war, the military has increasingly opted for the unmanned version, which can carry out a full range of tasks "even better than a human", said Rani, using his first name only for security reasons.
While such vehicles and other systems are currently operated by humans, future versions could be autonomous, raising ethical and legal concerns over the unchartered future of warfare being shaped by the Israeli military in the Gaza war.