The Israeli air force hit at least 20 smuggling tunnels today while ground troops fought one of the fiercest engagements of the war in a suburb of Gaza city.

Israel has taken the attitude "Let the world howl. We know what we have to do to safeguard our people from attack."

IAF planes on Sunday afternoon attacked at least twenty smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, on Gaza's southern border with Egypt. The tunnels were being used to smuggle weaponry into Gaza, according to the IDF.

The IDF said that it would continue to expand operations against such tunnels along the Corridor.

Earlier Sunday, the IAF said that over the weekend Hamas operatives tried to shoot down an Israeli plane using an anti-aircraft missile.

The army has said that Hamas possesses several shoulder-held ground-to-air missiles, and in air raids overnight Saturday, the IAF hit a Gaza mosque in which a number of them were stored.

Meanwhile, in one of the fiercest ground battles since the start of Operation Cast Lead, IDF troops battled Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza City suburb of Sheikh Ajleen.

Fighting in Sheikh Ajleen erupted before dawn and continued into the day as IDF infantrymen and tanks advanced toward Gaza City and its approximately 400,000 residents, Palestinian witnesses said. Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they ambushed the soldiers, leading to some of the heaviest fighting since Israel sent ground forces into the territory on January 3.

Slowly but surely, the IDF is making it very difficult for Hamas to attack Israel while destroying their infrastructure and killing off their fighters. And they show no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Regrettably, this is bad news for civilians who are immorally being used by Hamas as human shields. We can only hope that Israel finishes the job on Hamas quickly and ends the misery that the terrorists have inflicted on their own people as a result of their actions.