- Israel targets Hamas tunnels as part of military campaign in Gaza
- Tunnels stretch for hundreds of kilometers beneath Gaza
- Israel says Israeli hostages are being held in some tunnels
ZEELIM GROUND FORCES BASE, Israel, Nov 16 (Portal) – After Israeli army engineers located the entrance to a Hamas tunnel beneath an evacuated hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, they filled the passageway with exploding gel and detonated the detonator.
The blast ripped through the building and sent smoke billowing from at least three points along a nearby street in a neighborhood of Beit Hanoun city, surveillance footage showed.
“The gel spread and exploded everything they had waiting for us in the tunnel,” an army officer told reporters at a briefing at the Zeelim ground force base in southern Israel.
Clearing the tunnels is a key part of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in response to the Palestinian militant group’s deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7.
When the army isn’t using munitions to map the bunkers, access shafts and tunnels that both sides say stretch hundreds of kilometers (miles) beneath Gaza, it relies on tracking robots and other remote-controlled technology.
The officer could not be identified in accordance with briefing rules and declined to provide further details about the underground fight, which he said was still in progress. He did not name the hospital in Beit Hanoun.
“I think other methods are being developed,” he said. “This is where creativity and innovation come into play.”
In Beit Hanoun, where his forces were operating, some gunmen stormed the Israeli military from tunnel shafts and were killed, he said.
Israel’s policy, he said, is not to send personnel in the other direction to confront Palestinian fighters, who have an advantage as defenders in narrow, dark, inadequately ventilated and collapsible passages with which they are familiar.
“We don’t want to go down there. We know they left us a lot of side bombs (improvised explosive devices),” he said.
One such bomb, attached to the cover of a tunnel access shaft at ground level, killed four special forces reservists last week.
Network of tunnels
Security sources say Hamas has tunnels for attacks, smuggling and storage. Each tunnel can have dozens of shafts leading to depths ranging from 20 to 80 meters (65-260 feet).
Destroying a shaft is relatively easy and quick, the officer said, adding: “Any platoon can do it.”
The Israeli military said last week that 130 shafts had been destroyed so far, but did not provide figures for the tunnels destroyed.
The tunnels are more difficult to negotiate. The official said several tons of the exploding gel were needed every few hundred meters of tunnel – about which he declined to give technical details other than to say it was delivered by truck.
The after-effect analysis is difficult. The official said about half of the shafts in his Beit Hanoun area of operations had been destroyed, but acknowledged that they could be rebuilt.
“It’s hard to say how many tunnels will be destroyed because they are all connected,” he said.
Hamas has denied using hospitals as cover for such tunnels. She has rejected claims by Israel that it has a command center beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, which Israeli forces entered on Wednesday.
Efforts to avoid endangering hostages
Israel said Hamas returned about 240 people to Gaza as prisoners in the Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people. One of the few hostages released said she and at least two dozen others were held in a tunnel.
The army officer said care was being taken not to endanger tunnels where hostages could be present.
“Sometimes we get indications that this (a target) could be related to hostages. And then we know that we are not allowed to attack it unless we get authorization (that it is clear),” he said
Like much of northern Gaza, Beit Hanoun was cleared of civilians who fled south on Israel’s orders as it sent ground troops to try to wipe out Hamas.
“The only population left are the terrorists,” the official said, adding that sometimes a secondary explosion triggered by a tunnel-destroying explosion “brings down a building a few hundred meters away.”
Captured Palestinian gunmen had provided Israel with information about the tunnel network, he said, but that information had been limited.
“Most people don’t know the whole city. But they know their own village and the tunnel system quite well,” the official said.
The official said it could take months to destroy Gaza’s entire underground network.
“I think it’s more complicated than the New York subway,” he said.
Editing by Timothy Heritage
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