Israel to flood Gaza City with explosive-laden robots, report says
Israeli soldiers, tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) near the Gaza boundary, on 16 September 2025
Nadav Rapaport reports in Middle East Eye on 17 September 2025:
The Israeli military is preparing to deploy an “unprecedented” number of explosive-laden, remote-controlled vehicles into Gaza City, according to Walla news outlet.
Known in Gaza as “booby-trapped robots”, the vehicles are decommissioned armoured personnel carriers (APCs), rigged with explosives and operated remotely by Israeli forces.
They are driven deep into urban areas before being detonated, causing massive blasts and widespread destruction. The practice is referred to by the Israeli military as “suicide APCs.”
Israeli outlet Walla reported on Tuesday that the military has stationed a large number of these outdated APCs along the Gaza boundary, converting them into “mega-explosives” for use in its ground offensive, which it said began on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, the Jerusalem Post said the use of old M113 APCs had tripled under the orders of Southern Command chief Yaniv Asor. According to Israeli media, the explosions are so powerful that some have been heard as far away as central Israel.
Palestinians say the blasts are “earth-shaking” and cause widespread terror and destruction in their wake. “They’re extremely powerful. They reduce entire buildings to crushed rubble,” Hamza Shabaan, a Gaza City resident who witnessed the robots’ explosions, previously told Middle East Eye. “They are far more devastating than air strikes.”
At least 100 explosive robots were used in densely populated areas between 13 August and 3 September alone, according to the Gaza-based Government Media Office.
The nonprofit Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reports that around 300 residential units are destroyed daily due to these explosions. The use of these robots is occurring at an “unprecedented pace”, suggesting a strategy “to wipe the city off the map”, Euro-Med Monitor said.
“Meet Israel’s most dystopian weapon used to terrorise Gazans into fleeing south: APC vehicles repurposed into robotic giant bombs,” Palestinian researcher Muhammad Shehada said on X. “Israel’s army has been swarming Gaza city with those APCs to indiscriminately barrel bomb overcrowded neighbourhoods & create chaos.”