From the very beginning of the war, there seemed to be no intention of stopping.

The ground fighting began not in Hargeisa or Galkayo, but in a small and inconspicuous town on the border between Somalia and Djibouti, in a seaside town called Zela.

This small town with a population of only a few thousand people, after the Somali reunification war, because the residents of the town belonged to the former Somaliland President Kashin's lineage, after the reunification, the Somalis in the town also moved eastward.

The Red Guard Regiment did not abandon this town, because this seaside town with thousands of houses was an excellent battlefield for them. By the way, it is the station of the Delta Special Forces of the US Army, a special forces force of up to 2,000 people, which was the protagonist of the United States to show its muscles in East Africa.

As the war approached, in order to ensure the safety of the defensive line, the Red Police, which originally had only one infantry company, has now been strengthened to the size of an army reinforced battalion, with a number of nearly 1,000 people. To assist the troops, there was even a tank company of six Apocalypse tanks and six armored vehicles stationed in the town.

The engineering unit has also carried out a lot of renovations in this town, and after a month or two of repairs, this town has now become a very good front line of war between Somalia and Djibouti.

To the south of the town of Zela is the town of Gidi, which is about 40 kilometers apart, and unlike Zela, the town of Gidi is an inland town with a population of several thousand, and now it has become a military frontier, like Zela. It was agreed that it was held on the border between Somalia and Djibouti.

Djibouti has always been a subordinate country in France's mind and one of France's very important African interest circles. This former French colony of France has gained independence despite its independence. But France has always had a strong influence in this area.

The Djibouti armed forces were established on 6/6/77. The total strength is 3,030 people, including 160 in the army. It was organized into an artillery regiment, a border guard unit and an armored company. Navy 60 people. Air Force 100 people, with an air base. There are also 1,200 gendarmerie and 1,400 State security forces. Djibouti has a system of voluntary military service. The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

Djibouti is an important French military base in the Red Sea region of the Indian Ocean, with about 4,500 French troops stationed at all times, as stipulated in an interim military protocol signed on 27 June 1977 between the Government of Djibouti and the Government of France. The French Army in Kyrgyzstan has two combat regiments and a special company of paratrooper regiments; The Navy has a naval unit to reinforce the Indian Ocean Fleet, an assault team and a communications listening post; The Air Force has a fleet of fighters and a helicopter transport group. France provides logistical assistance to the Djibouti army and has sent military partners to help Djibouti maintain its national security and train its military personnel.

Despite pursuing a foreign policy of neutrality, non-alignment, and good-neighborliness. The focus is on maintaining traditional relations with France, but Djibouti is also actively cooperating with the United States military deployment in the Horn of Africa in many places. Relations with Japan have gradually warmed, and France, the United States, and Japan have built military bases in Kyrgyzstan.

When the war came, Djibouti also agreed to train combat troops in Djibouti, and the coalition garrison agreement was increased from a few thousand to a ceiling of 20,000. The French Sixth Panzer Division (Sixth Heavy Cavalry Battle Group) was stationed in Djibouti, along with U.S. special forces and Italian units, as well as the Egyptian Eighth Infantry Division mobilized from Ethiopia, as well as some Djiboutian troops, to form part of the Second Expeditionary Force of the Allied Forces.

When Li Lan received the news, the flames of war had already been ignited in these two towns, and the fire of M270 rocket launchers came. Turning these two towns into a sea of fire. At a time when the air battle in Hargeisa was raging, the artillery fire here also reached the peak of the strike.

The French field artillery units and the Djibouti artillery regiments also entered into a coordinated strike at the height of the artillery attack. Heavy artillery shells crossed the border line. Smash into two towns that are already under fire.

The sudden torrential rain in the sky evaporated in the rumbling explosion, and the moist air began to emit invisible smoke.

The piles of shells that rained down caused almost the entire outer line of Zela to burn. In the wind and rain, the ground was full of mud. There was a shout of killing everywhere. The roar of the machine-gun artillery almost overwhelmed the pouring rain, and the wind howled. Blood is burning.

With the cooperation of the 4th Light Cavalry Brigade of the French Army, the Ethiopian 8th Infantry Division launched round after round of attacks with extreme ferocity, and the covering artillery fire and the suppressed artillery fire of the marines were intertwined to draw a bright track in the sky, and the pillars of fire rushed straight into the rain curtain in the sky. Everywhere there was the scene of that searing battle.

Two AMX-10P tracked infantry fighting vehicles roared through the mud and had just burst into the perimeter of the Marine Corps' defensive position when a blazing flash of fire rushed out and viciously penetrated the thin-skinned armored body of the AMX-10P that hit the head. With a burst of fire, the AMX-10P infantry fighting vehicle was no longer motionless.

Is it the Sharp Tooth "V-1FT" anti-tank missile of the Red Guard Corps Army? The answer is no, the Red Guard soldiers are not yet extravagant to the extent of failure, the storm has greatly affected the joint logistics supply of the troops, the base of the configuration of anti-tank missiles is reserved for those French heavy tanks, and for these thin-skinned 'cans' it is not enough to use the V-1FT.

So who else, apart from the V-1FT anti-tank missile, can form such a large destruction effect at such a long distance? The answer is an anti-tank weapon system similar to the Chinese PF98 anti-tank rocket launcher, and a 120 mm anti-tank weapon system from the base's individual weapon series. This distinction between battalion and company anti-tank rockets has always been an indispensable weapon for the Red Guard Corps, the Red Guard Corps, the Red Guard Soldiers, and the Airborne Troops. Not to mention the AMX-10P infantry fighting vehicle, even those French light tanks, and even some main battle tanks, could not withstand the sharp blow of such large-caliber anti-tank rockets.

In addition to launchers, rockets, and firing machines, the 120 mm anti-tank rocket system for battalion anti-tank rocket systems also includes a simple fire control system, a battalion low-light sight, and a battalion tripod. The combined system consists of a continuous scope, a continuous low-light sight and a continuous tripod group. The launch canisters are all the same, made of fiberglass, weigh less than 10 kg, and can be reused.

In addition to the front and rear caps installed on the front and rear of the barrel to protect the shooter from burns, the 120 mm anti-tank system also fits a latch on the latching device to prevent the rocket from sliding out when firing at a wide angle of fire. In addition, a quadrant mount is installed above the inside of the canister, which makes it easy for the shooter to check whether the barrel is level. Although these are details, they are enough to see good intentions. The maximum firing range is 1,800 meters, the effective range of the battalion type is 800 meters, the continuous type is 400 meters, and the firing speed is 15 seconds, and the reaction time of one shot is less than 10 seconds. Behind these figures is a record of the lethality of the 120 mm anti-tank system and its prideful appearance compared to its peers.

The AMX-10P infantry fighting vehicle is just one of several hunting objects of the 120mm anti-tank system.

At this moment, the destroyed AMX-10P tracked infantry fighting vehicle is still burning, but it should at least be glad that it is only a 120mm anti-tank rocket of the anti-tank vehicle system, if it encounters a ruthless character like the V-1FT, it can be directly knocked back to the state of parts, where will it be given a chance to burn and catch fire. Moreover, it was only a multi-purpose rocket that hit it.

Among the rockets used in the 120 mm anti-tank system, there are mainly two types of rockets: armor-piercing rockets and multi-purpose rockets. The diameter of the bullets is 120 mm.

The former is mainly used to deal with armored targets such as tanks, because this type of ammunition has a strong ability to destroy reactive armor, main armor and lethal vitality. Sometimes, however, the Red Guard soldiers also liked it to bombard enemy fire points.

It adopts a tandem armor-piercing warhead structure and a copper medicine cover with an equal wall thickness cone angle of 60 degrees, and is equipped with a polyblack-2 precision pressed medicine column. At the beginning of the design, the armor-piercing rocket accurately defined its design purpose - anti-armor.

The multi-purpose rocket is because it has the effect of armor piercing, killing and incendiary, all of which are mainly used to destroy infantry fighting vehicles, light armored vehicles, firearms, equipment, and the vitality of killing and exposing them. It can also be used to destroy improvised field fortifications and tunnels.

The warhead using the self-forging fragmentation armor-piercing technique is also packed with Black-2 explosives, but the equal-wall cone angle of the medicine hood has been expanded to 140 degrees. The muzzle velocity after launch can reach 205 sec/m. If landed at an angle of 55 degrees, the thickness of the armor piercing can even reach 400 mm. With such a thickness, the AMX-10P infantry fighting vehicle could not be stopped.

Another rocket followed and hit the AMX-10P tank that was reversing in the future. To the horror of the Ethiopian soldiers, the Somali rockets were able to maintain such accurate hits in the midst of such a storm. Tearing through the weak armored body, more than 120 steel balls with a diameter of 5.5 mm and combustible metal zirconium entered the body of the armor-piercing warhead, instantly turning the entire cabin into a purgatory. The AMX-10P infantry fighting vehicle was ablaze in the blink of an eye with a dense range of prefabricated fragments with an incendiary effect and a dense kill radius of 25 meters. Armor-piercing, killing, incendiary and other destructive effects, which in itself is the goal pursued by the 120 mm anti-tank system anti-tank system multi-purpose rocket.

As if realizing that the situation was not very good, two Panhard wheeled armored reconnaissance vehicles, under the cover of a Leclerc main battle tank, pounced on the battlefield that was already burning with the wreckage of six armored fighting vehicles.

——————

In the base, in response to this battle was Li Lan's undoubted order: "Order the 1st Mechanized Infantry Brigade to reinforce Zela Town and Gidi Town as quickly as possible." (To be continued......)