After Israeli army engineers found the entrance to a Hamas tunnel under an empty hospital in northern Gaza, they filled the passage with blasting gel and pressed the detonator button.
The blast ripped through the building and sent smoke streaming through at least three points of a nearby street in the Beit Hanoun district, security footage showed.
“The gel spread and exploded everything they were waiting for us in the tunnel,” an army official told reporters at a news conference at the Zeelim base in southern Israel.
Clearing the tunnels is an important part of the Israeli army’s campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in response to the Palestinian militant group’s attack on southern Israel on October 7.
When the army isn’t using munitions to control bunkers, access holes and tunnels that both sides say run hundreds of kilometers beneath Gaza, it relies on tracking robots and other remotecontrolled technology.
The officer was not identified in accordance with interview rules and declined to provide further details about the underground fighting, which he said was still in progress. The name of the hospital in Beit Hanoun was not disclosed.
TUNNEL NETWORK
Security sources say Hamas has tunnels for attacks, smuggling and storage. Dozens of shafts can lead to each of the tunnels, which are 20 to 80 meters deep.
Destroying a well is relatively easy and quick, the officer said, adding: “Any platoon can do it.”
Tunnels are more difficult. The official said that a few hundred meters of tunnel would require several tons of blasting gel about which he declined to give technical details, other than to say it was delivered by truck.
Hamas denies using hospitals to hide these tunnels. She has rejected Israel’s claims that it has a command center beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, which Israeli forces entered on Wednesday.
According to Israel, Hamas took about 240 people hostage to Gaza in the Oct. 7 attack, killing about 1,200 people. One of the freed hostages one of the few so far said she and at least 20 others were held in a tunnel.
The Army official said care was being taken not to endanger tunnels where hostages could be held.
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