Zeelim Ground Force Base, Israel:
After locating what they described as the entrance to a Hamas tunnel beneath an evacuated hospital in northern Gaza, Israeli army engineers filled the passage with exploding gel and hit the detonator.
The blast engulfed the building and sent smoke billowing from at least three points along a nearby road in a district of the city of Beit Hanoun, surveillance footage showed.
“The gel spread and exploded what they had been waiting for us in the tunnel,” an army officer told reporters during a briefing at the Zeelim Ground Forces 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 group’s deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7.
When not using munitions to map the bunkers, access shafts and tunnels that both sides say run hundreds of miles beneath Gaza, the military turns to tracking robots and other remote-controlled technology.
The officer could not be identified under briefing rules and declined to provide further details about underground fighting, which he said was a work in progress. He did not mention the hospital in Beit Hanoun.
“I think other methods are being developed,” he said. “That’s where creativity and innovation come in.”
In Beit Hanoun, where his troops were operating, some armed men had attacked and killed the Israeli army from tunnel shafts, he said.
Israel’s policy, he said, was not to send personnel in the other direction to confront Palestinian fighters who would have a defender advantage in narrow, dark, under-ventilated and collapsible passages with which they were familiar.
“We don’t want to go there. We know they left a lot of side bombs (improvised explosive devices) for us,” he said.
One such bomb, mounted on the ground on the cover of a tunnel access shaft, had killed four special forces reservists last week.
WEB OF TUNNELS
Hamas has tunnels for attacks, smuggling and storage, security sources say. Dozens of shafts can lead to each tunnel at depths between 20 and 80 meters (65-260 feet).
Destroying a shaft is relatively simple 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 demolished tunnels.
The tunnels are more difficult to tackle. The officer said that for every few hundred meters of tunnel, several tons of the exploding gel – which he would not provide technical details about – would be required other than to say it would be delivered by truck.
After-action analysis is difficult. The officer said about half of the shafts in his area of operations in Beit Hanoun had been destroyed, but acknowledged they could be rebuilt.
“It is difficult to say how many tunnels have been (destroyed) because they are all connected,” he said.
Hamas has denied using hospitals as cover for such tunnels. It has rejected Israel’s claims that it has a command center beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, where Israeli troops entered on Wednesday.
ATTEMPTS TO AVOID HOSTAGE TAKINGS IN DANGER
Hamas took about 240 people as prisoners to Gaza in the Oct. 7 attack, killing about 1,200, Israel said. One of the few hostages released said she and at least 20 others had been held in a tunnel.
The army officer said care is being taken to ensure that tunnels containing hostages are not compromised.
“We sometimes get indications that this (a target) may be related to hostages. And then we know not to attack it unless we get permission (that’s clear),” he said
Like much of northern Gaza, Beit Hanoun has been cleared of civilians, who fled south on Israel’s orders as it sent ground troops in an attempt to root out Hamas.
“The only population left are the terrorists,” the officer said, adding that sometimes a secondary explosion caused by a tunnel destruction “will bring down a building a few hundred meters away.”
Captured Palestinian gunmen have provided Israel with intelligence about the tunnel network, he said, but this information is limited.
“Most of them don’t know the whole city. But they know their own village, they know the tunnel system quite well,” the officer said.
The officer said it could take months to destroy Gaza’s entire underground network.
“I think it’s more complicated than the New York City subway,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)