Israel floods Hamas tunnels
Some 1,300 tunnels under Gaza are being used by Hamas as combat command center, weapons storage and attack staging area
The Israeli military has said it was flooding the vast underground network of tunnels of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
“It is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF (Israeli military) to neutralize the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network of tunnels,” it said, confirming media reports.
The military says many of the hostages taken by Hamas have been or continue to be held in the vast network of tunnels.
In December, some Israeli media said the army was leaning towards flooding the tunnels with seawater pumped from the Mediterranean, but experts warned it was dangerous and posed huge risks to civilians.
On Tuesday, the military said it had taken care not to “damage the area’s groundwater.”
At the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, there were 1,300 tunnels over 500 kilometers in Gaza, according to a study from the United States military academy West Point.
The army vowed to destroy them in the wake of Hamas’ 7 October attacks on Israel that resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on official Israeli figures.
About 250 foreign and Israeli hostages were also dragged to Gaza during the 7 October attack, of which around 132 are still held captive, including bodies of at least 28 people believed to have been killed.
Meanwhile, the epicenter of the fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas terrorists has been Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city where vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings.
The Israeli army said Tuesday its troops fighting in city blocks and tunnels had “eliminated terrorists during combat and located large quantities of weapons.”
Since the Hamas attack, Israel has launched a withering air, land and sea offensive in Gaza that has killed at least 26,751 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the territory.