2024-01-30T20:42:57+00:00
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/ The Israeli army said on Tuesday that it is pumping huge amounts of water into tunnels in Gaza with the aim of destroying the vast underground tunnel network used by Hamas militants to launch attacks on Israel.
The army announced in a statement that “this is part of a set of means deployed by the Israeli army to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas’s underground tunnel network.”
Earlier, a study published by the Modern War Institute at the US Military Academy at West Point reported that there are 1,300 tunnels extending over a distance of more than 500 kilometers in the Palestinian sector.
The US military also vowed to destroy it following Hamas’s unprecedented surprise attack on Israeli territory, which killed more than 1,140 people. About 250 people were kidnapped during the Hamas attack, 100 of whom were released in late November during a truce in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. According to Israeli authorities, 132 prisoners are still being held in the Gaza Strip, including 28 who are believed to have been killed.
In response, Israel vowed to “eliminate” Hamas and launched a devastating bombardment of the Gaza Strip, followed by a ground operation since October 27, killing 26,751 people, most of them women and children.
The Israeli military says many of the prisoners kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 were or are still being held in a vast network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip.
In December, some Israeli media reported that the military was considering flooding the tunnels with seawater pumped from the Mediterranean.
But experts have warned that this option is dangerous and poses great risks to civilians trapped in Gaza.
The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, warned in December that this would “cause significant damage to Gaza’s already dilapidated water and sanitation infrastructure.”
“There is also a risk of buildings and roads collapsing due to the increasing pressure and seawater seeping into Gaza,” she added.
For its part, the army said on Tuesday that it was doing this while taking into account not “harming the groundwater in the area.”
He explained that “water was pumped only into tunnel paths and appropriate locations.”
He pointed out that “this tool is one of a set of capabilities developed by the Israeli army and the Israeli security establishment in recent years for use in operations against Hamas’s underground infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”
The tunnel network under the coastal area was initially designed as a means of circumventing the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
Since the 2014 war between Palestinian factions in Gaza and Israel, the tunnel network has been expanded and Hamas has used it repeatedly to facilitate the launching of its rockets.