Gaza City tunnel network served Hamas senior leadership: Israel

The Israeli military has released images of a tunnel network that provided Hamas’s senior leadership covert passage across Gaza City.

An Israeli soldier emerges from a Hamas tunnel in the Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

The Israeli military has released footage of a tunnel network in Gaza City that it said provided Hamas’s senior leadership and operatives covert passage across the enclave.

The military said that tunnel shafts were found in the residences and offices of senior Hamas officials and that they allowed for covert descent through elevators and stairs and allowed for both escape and prolonged stays.

Hamas leaders, including political head Ismail Haniyeh, military chief Mohammed Deif and top Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, used the tunnel network, with Hamas commanders directing the October 7 attacks against Israel from the complex, said Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman.

“From this infrastructure, they could move and spread out across the strip,” he said.

The central Gaza City complex connected to nodes from which Hamas leaders could exit above ground and obtain protected passage to other areas of Gaza.

“From the heart of Gaza City,” said Mr Hagari, “they could go to Shifa Hospital, and from there take an ambulance as a taxi southward, and come back to Shifa, enter the network, move northward toward the Rantisi hospital area.”

The Israeli military has long held that Hamas uses medical infrastructure for operational cover, and Israel has raided both Shifa and Rantisi, among other hospitals, in search of militants, weapons and tunnels.

Representatives of Hamas couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The footage was released days after the Israeli military took a group of reporters, including from The Wall Street Journal, into what it said was the largest tunnel it had discovered in the enclave, one big enough for large vehicles to drive through it.

Daphne Richemond-Barak, a professor at Israel’s Reichman University and author of a book on underground combat, said that the newly revealed tunnels were the first time Israel had exposed a network of interconnected tunnels.

The footage included a video showing a tunnel 20m deep that the Israeli military said emerged from the residence of Sinwar’s aide-de-camp and included a spiral staircase and blast door.

The Wall Street Journal