The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
IDF blasts underground ‘terror’ city
Nataliya Vasilyeva Middle east correspondent
Israeli forces devastate what was believed to be ‘centre of power for Hamas’s military wing’
ISRAEL has blown up what it says was a “subterranean terror city” underneath a central Gaza City square that was used to plot the October 7 massacre.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it discovered “terrorist infrastructure” underneath Palestine Square, with lengthy tunnels connecting hiding places and offices belonging to Hamas’s senior military and political leaders.
Aerial footage released by the IDF late on Thursday night showed a series of explosions in the city centre destroying the underground infrastructure.
Israel reported earlier this week that it had secured control of what it called Hamas’s “elite quarter” in Gaza City from which Hamas leaders operated.
The complex has been described as a “centre of power for Hamas’s military and political wing”.
Some 600 Hamas terrorists were killed in the operation in the Rimal neighbourhood, the IDF claimed.
“Palestine Square was a centre of Hamas’s military rule and is surrounded by buildings that served as command and control centres, terror tunnel shafts and strategic buildings belonging to the organisation,” the IDF said in a statement, adding that Hamas’s infrastructure was embedded in a busy neighbourhood full of shops, residential buildings and a school for deaf children.
The network was actively used by Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and others, including to direct the Oct 7 attack, the IDF claimed.
Despite a reported failure to reach a new agreement with Hamas on a hostage release, Israel is believed to be pursuing fresh efforts to rescue some of the 129 Israelis held captive in Gaza.
Israel is still reluctant to offer the lasting truce that Hamas is seeking but is willing to offer to cease fire for two weeks, not one week as previously suggested, according to public broadcaster Kan.
A frontier Israeli kibbutz said yesterday its 73-year-old Israeli-American resident thought to have been kidnapped by Hamas was actually killed in the massacre and his body was taken to Gaza where it remains.
Gadi Haggai was presumed to have been kidnapped on the day Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel after he disappeared from the kibbutz of Nir Oz where he lived with his wife Judy.
Before the couple was kidnapped to Gaza, Judy managed to call a member of the kibbutz to say she had been shot in the arm and that Gadi had been shot in the head. There had been no other signs of life for them since.
The new information sheds light on just how little is known about the fate of some of those who went missing on the morning of Oct 7.
Earlier this week NBC reported that 26-year-old Noa Argamani was abducted by a civilian mob, not by Hamas as previously thought.
In a sign of a shift in public opinion, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud
Olmert called for a permanent ceasefire, arguing that Israel’s international partners will soon force it to stop the war anyway but it might be too late to save the hostages.
“It’s decision time,” Mr Olmert wrote in an editorial for the newspaper.
“The State of Israel now faces the choice between a cease-fire as part of a deal that may bring home the hostages in the hope that most of them are alive, and a ceasefire with no deal, no hostages, no apparent achievement, with a total loss of the remnants of international public support for the State of Israel’s right to exist without terror threats from murder organisations.”