‘The destruction is massive … It’s a disaster area’: Israeli soldiers speak about fighting in Gaza

Exclusive: IDF troops shed light on their experience of fighting in the territory, where Palestinian casualties have passed 27,700

Demobilised Israeli reservists have described how they deployed massive fire power in a brutal, complex and often one-sided war of sporadic but intense clashes that has reduced much of Gaza to ruins.

They spoke, too, of the challenge of fighting on unfamiliar ground that is well-known to Hamas and which offered easy opportunities for surprise attacks, despite Israel's conventional military superiority and air power.