Ahmad Ismail Ali (Arabic: أحمد إسماعيل علي) (October 14, 1917 – December 26, 1974) was the Commander-in-Chief of Egypt's army and minister of war during the Yom Kippur War. He is best known for his planning of the attack across the Suez Canal that surprised Israel on October 6, 1973, and began the Yom Kippur War.
Ismail graduated from the Cairo Military Academy in 1938, saw service with the Allies in the Western Desert during World War II, and f...
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Ahmad Ismail Ali (Arabic: أحمد إسماعيل علي) (October 14, 1917 – December 26, 1974) was the Commander-in-Chief of Egypt's army and minister of war during the Yom Kippur War. He is best known for his planning of the attack across the Suez Canal that surprised Israel on October 6, 1973, and began the Yom Kippur War.
Ismail graduated from the Cairo Military Academy in 1938, saw service with the Allies in the Western Desert during World War II, and fought as a brigade commander in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He later trained in Britain, fought the Franco-British-Israeli forces during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and undertook further training in the Soviet Union. During the 1967 Six-Day War he was a divisional commander. Ismail was made Army Chief of Staff in March 1969, but was dismissed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in September as a scapegoat for successful Israeli raids. New president Anwar al-Sadat, however, named him chief of intelligence in September 1970, and from 1971 to 1972 he...
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