A report in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday said that US and Israeli officials estimate as much as 80% of Hamas’s “vast warren of tunnels under Gaza” are still intact even after weeks of IDF forces risking their lives to destroy them.
“Hamas’s strategy revolves around the tunnels—it is their center of gravity. They needed the tunnels to level the battlefield with the IDF,” said Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and officer in the Marine Corps and Central Intelligence Agency. “The tunnels are where Hamas planned [before Oct. 7] to wait out Israel’s political will as Israel faced pressure for a cease-fire.”
Israel’s goal to destroy the tunnels is hampered by the fact that the hostages are being held in the tunnels. According to a senior Israeli military official, some of the hostages are being held in a command center in a tunnel under Khan Younis – in the same location as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is using them as human shields.
Due to the presence of the hostages, the IDF is using an approach of focusing on clearing “nodes” within the tunnels rather than destroying the entire system.
“It’s a very hard mission. It’s done slowly, very carefully. It’s urban warfare unseen globally,” the official said.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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In the last war Israel left many tunnels and installed hidden cameras.The engineers installed a device that permitted them to see terrorists who would enter the tunnels with IDF hidden cameras and then it the device to cause the tunnels to explode and collapse on the terrorists.