The tactical deployment of the Ottoman III, XX and XXII Corps defending the Gaza-to-Beersheba line did not change when Enver Pasa activated the Yildirim Army Group (also known as Thunderbolt Army Group and Group F) in June 1917. This new group (commanded by German General and Ottoman Marshal Erich von Falkenhayn, former Prussian Minister of War, Chief of Staff of the German field armies and commander of the Ninth Army) was reinforced by surplus Ottoman units transferred from Galicia, Romania and Thrace after the collapse of Russia. Yildirim Army Group consisted of the Fourth Army headquarters and Syrian units commanded by Cemal Pasa which remained in Syria, and the Fourth Army headquarters in Palestine commanded by Kress von Kressenstein. The Fourth Army headquarters in Palestine was inactivated on 26 September 1917 to be reorganised into two armies and renamed. Six days later it was reactivated as the new Ottoman Eighth Army headquarters, still commanded by Kress von Kressenstein and responsible for the Palestine front. The new Seventh Army was also activated, commanded by Fevzi Pasa after the resignation of Mustafa Kemal. Well-constructed trenches, protected by wire, fortified defences north-west, west and south-west of Beersheba. This semicircle of entrenchments included well-sited redoubts on a series of high points extending up to from the town.