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JERUSALEM/LONDON. — What lies in wait for Israeli ground troops in Gaza, security sources say, is a Hamas tunnel network hundreds of kilometres long and up to 80 metres deep, described by one freed hostage as “a spider’s web” and by one expert as the “Viet Cong times 10”.
The Palestinian Islamist group has different kinds of tunnels running beneath the sandy 360-sq-km coastal strip and its borders — including attack, storage and operational burrows, Western and Middle East sources familiar with the matter said. The United States believes Israel’s special forces will face an unprecedented challenge having to battle Hamas militants while trying to avoid killing hostages held below ground, a US official said.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that Iraq’s nine-month-long battle to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State might prove to have been easier than what awaits the Israelis — likely to be “a lot of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), a lot of booby traps, and just a really grinding activity”.
Even though Israel has invested heavily in tunnel detection — including a sensor-equipped underground barrier it called an “iron wall” — Hamas is still thought to have working tunnels to the outside world.
After the last round of hostilities in 2021, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yehya Al-Sinwar, said: “They started saying they destroyed 100kms of Hamas tunnels. I am telling you, the tunnels we have in the Gaza Strip exceed 500kms. Even if their narrative is true, they only destroyed 20 percent of the tunnels.”
There has been no corroboration of the comment by Sinwar, who is thought to be hiding underground ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive. But the estimate of hundreds of kilometres is widely accepted by security analysts, even though the blockaded coastal strip is only 40km long.
With Israel in full control of Gaza’s air and sea access and 59km of its 72km land borders — with Egypt 13km to the south — tunnels provide one of the few ways for Hamas to bring in weapons, equipment and people.
While it and other Palestinian groups are secretive about their networks, recently released Israeli hostage, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, said: “It looked like a spider’s web, many, many tunnels,” adding: “We walked kilometres under the ground.”
Hamas believes that with Israel’s overwhelming aerial and armoured military superiority, tunnels are a way to cut some of those advantages by forcing Israel’s soldiers to move underground in cramped spaces the Hamas fighters know well.
An Israeli military spokesperson said on Thursday: “I won’t elaborate on the number of kilometres of tunnels but it is a high number, built under schools and residential areas.”
Urging the United Nations Security Council to intervene, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for an immediate cessation of “aggression” on Gaza and moves toward “a political solution instead of military and security solutions”. — Reuters.
Online Reporter