Ammunition Hill

Battle of Ammunition Hill
Part of Six-Day War
Trenches on Ammunition Hill, 1967, with the apartment buildings of the Shmuel HaNavi neighborhood in the background
Date June 6, 1967 Location 31°47′58″N 35°13′41″E / 31.79944°N 35.22806°E / 31.79944; 35.22806 (Ammunition Hill)Coordinates: 31°47′58″N 35°13′41″E / 31.79944°N 35.22806°E / 31.79944; 35.22806 (Ammunition Hill) Ammunition Hill, the western slope of Mount Scopus Result Israeli victory
Belligerents
Israel	Jordan
Commanders and leaders
Mordechai Gur Shlomo Yossi Yafe Uzi Narkis	Hussein bin Talal Zaid ibn Shaker
Strength
Reinforced company	About 150 soldiers
Casualties and losses
36 killed	71 killed

Ammunition Hill (Hebrew: גבעת התחמושת‎‎, Giv'at HaTahmoshet) was a fortified Jordanian military post in the northern part of Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem and the western slope of Mount Scopus. It was the site of one of the fiercest battles of the Six-Day War. Ammunition Hill is now a national memorial site.

Ammunition Hill was located west of a police academy, with a fortified trench connecting them. The site was built by the British during their Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s, and was used to store the police academy's ammunition. The Jordanian Arab Legion seized control of the hill during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, severing the link between Mount Scopus and West Jerusalem. In the wake of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, parts of Mount Scopus remained an Israeli enclave in Jordanian-held territory, with the Jordanians blocking access to Hadassah Medical Center and the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the hilltop.

The post consisted of tens of bunkers built along the three main trench systems surrounding the hill, with fortified gun emplacements covering each trench. The living quarters for the Jordanian defenders of the hill were in a large underground bunker. At the time of the Six-Day War, the post was defended by a reinforced Jordanian company of 150 soldiers of the El-Hussein regiment (number 2).

A decision was taken by the Israeli Jerusalem Command, under General Uzi Narkis, to forgo an aerial attack on the hill due to its proximity to civilian areas. Instead an artillery barrage was to be focused on the police post, followed by a ground attack using an enlarged paratroop company.

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