political appointees with veterans of the Yemen war. After the war began on 5 June 1967, Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the Sinai Peninsula. The forward Egyptian forces were shattered in three places by the attacking Israelis, including at the Battle of Abu-Ageila (1967), and a retreat to the mountain passes fifty miles east of the canal was ordered. This developed into a rout as the Israelis harried the retreating troops from the ground and from the air. Presidents Sadat and Mubarak After the 1967 disaster, two field armies, the Second Army and the Third Army, both stationed on the Suez, were established. The armed forces also fought in the 1969–1970 War of Attrition against Israeli positions especially in the Sinai. The October War of 1973 began with a massive and successful Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal. After crossing the cease-fire lines, Egyptian forces advanced virtually unopposed into the Sinai Peninsula. The Syrians coordinated their attack on the Golan Heights to coincide with the Egyptian offensive and initially made threatening gains into Israeli-held territory. As Egyptian president Anwar Sadat began to worry about Syria's fortunes, he believed that capturing two strategic mountain passes located deeper in the Sinai would make his position stronger during the negotiations. He therefore ordered the Egyptians to go back on the offensive, but the attack was quickly repulsed. The Israelis then counterattacked at the juncture of the Second and Third Armies, crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt, and began slowly advancing southward and westward in over a week of heavy fighting which inflicted heavy casualties on both sides. Between the 18th and 22 of October, the IDF fought in the Port City of Ismalia in order to encircle Egypt's second army, but failed to capture the city after heroic resistance. On October 22 a United Nations-brokered ceasefire quickly unraveled, with each side blaming the other for the breach. By October 24, the Israelis had improved their positions considerably and completed their encirclement of Egypt's Third Army and the city of Suez. This development led to tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, a second ceasefire was imposed cooperatively on October 25 to end the war. At the conclusion of hostilities, Israeli forces were just from Damascus and from Cairo. Egypt claimed victory in the October War because its military objective of capturing a foothold of Sinai was achieved. In