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Gaza tunnel system still ‘80 per cent intact’
Officials from the US and Israel estimate that as little as 20pc of the underground network has been damaged or rendered inoperable
Israel has failed to destroy Hamas’s tunnel system, with 80 per cent of the network still intact, officials have said.
When Israel waged its war on Gaza in the aftermath of the Oct 7 attacks, destroying the tunnel network underneath – estimated to be around 300 miles long – was one of its key objectives.
Officials from the US and Israel interviewed by the Wall Street Journal estimated that just 20 to 40 per cent of the tunnels have been damaged or rendered inoperable. Most of them are in the northern part of Gaza.
Since the start of the war, the Israeli military has deployed a number of tactics to penetrate the network including sending dogs with cameras to search the tunnels ahead of IDF soldiers entering, using seawater from the Mediterranean to flood them as well as pounding them with airstrikes.
Efforts to pump in seawater to corrode the network have not been as successful as initially thought, the WSJ reported, citing US officials.
It has also been difficult to assess the extent of damage to the underground labyrinth, the report said, because it is not known how far the tunnels truly stretch.
Israel’s military has maintained that dismantling the underground labyrinth would deny Hamas’ leadership and fighters a place of refuge and take out their command and control centres.
Hostages are also believed to be held in the tunnels though, creating a complex problem for the Israeli military.
Israel’s military operations in Gaza’s second city, Khan Younis, have ramped up over the past week. The Israeli army says that it believes that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader, is hiding in the tunnel network underneath and that it is home to significant Hamas command and control centres.
Aid organisations and Gazans themselves have said that the location of the ground fighting is intentional to push the 2.2 million population toward Egypt in an effort to displace them from Gaza.
Heavy fighting continued on Sunday in the vicinity of Khan Younis’ hospitals for a seventh day. The IDF said it was carrying out “precise operations” against Hamas in the southern city, saying that its intelligence suggests members of Hamas are operating inside and around the Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the local health ministry said that hospitals have been “under siege” over the past week in a repeat of Israel’s controversial strategy in the north of Gaza earlier in the war, which they said was in part designed to uncover tunnel entrances.