After Israeli army engineers found the entrance to a tunnel belonging to the Hamas terror group beneath an empty hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, 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 in the war that began on October 7 after Hamas terrorists controlling the Gaza Strip carried out the largest terrorist attack on Israeli soil in the past 50 years, causing 1,200 deaths and kidnapped around 240 people.
When the army doesn’t use munitions to verify the existence of bunkers and entrances to tunnels that both sides say run hundreds of kilometers beneath Gaza, it prefers to use 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
The terrorist group Hamas has tunnels for attacks, smuggling and storage, Israeli security sources say. 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 several tons of blasting gel which he declined to give technical details about other than to say it will be delivered by truck would be needed for a few hundred meters of tunnel.
In the October 7 attack, Hamas took around 240 people hostage to Gaza. One of the freed hostages 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.
“Tunnel of Terror,” located under a mosque in Gaza, leads Israeli military to Hamas hideout
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