According made by IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman, the IDF is anticipating an intense night of airstrikes against Gaza and in return an intense night of rocket fire on Tuesday night. The IDF is preparing to hit more locations in the underground tunnel complex that Hamas has erected since 2014, including many “safehouse” bunkers for high-ranking Hamas officials buried as deep as 70 meters. The complex is known as the “metro” and is built with reinforced cement walls to protect its occupants and serve as a tunnel system to move armaments back and forth through the strip.

Hidai said that the IDF is preparing to strike the network in areas that have thus far been undamaged by the IAF airstrikes. The IDF has “an intensive night ahead of us” and will strike “new locations” of the sprawling network in two other sections of the Gaza Strip that have not yet been hit over the past four nights,  said.

He made his comments after a terrorist mortar barrage targeted the Eshkol region in the northwestern Negev. Two Thai workers were killed and several civilians and a soldier were wounded.

At least 10 civilians were wounded, four of them seriously, following the barrage of more than 50 mortars. The two Thai workers died on their way to Soroka-University Medical Center in Beersheba.

A 19-year-old soldier was also wounded in his upper body by shrapnel when a mortar hit the Erez crossing, where his unit was assisting in transferring humanitarian aid shipments to the Gaza Strip. He was transferred to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon in stable condition.

Despite calls for a ceasefire, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the IDF has thousands of more targets left to strike.

“No person, area or neighborhood in Gaza is immune,” he said at a navy base in Ashdod. “We have thousands of more attack targets… The IDF has many plans to continue striking Hamas, and the fighting won’t stop until we bring about complete and long-term calm.”

“The international community also needs to understand that it was the Hamas terrorist group that opened fire and that is continuing to fire indiscriminately toward civilian populations, and it bears responsibility and is paying the price,” he added.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)