Israel Defence Forces releases footage they claim shows their army 'destroying Hamas tunnels' in Gaza.
There is no place on earth like Gaza. Everywhere you look, there are people. Traders hawk produce on upturned plastic crates; old men lead donkeys through crowds, shopkeepers brew fresh coffee on iron stoves; and all around are children: running, playing, laughing and screaming.
They form an entire subterranean world that is so vast it has been described as a 'metro system' - but one far larger than even the London or Paris undergrounds. When I was last in Gaza in 2016, the influence of the tunnels was everywhere. Thousands of people have found work in them and tens of thousands more, from drivers to shopkeepers have benefitted from the money flowing into the Gazan economy from the work they provided. But they were of course totally invisible.
The situation is both stark and brutal: Hamas has massive stockpiles of fuel to light its tunnels, while ordinary Gazans are rushed to hospitals that have barely enough electricity to power their equipment. IDF sources tell me that the tunnels range from narrow corridors of about 2 metres by 1 metre, to vast passageways that can accommodate cars and even trucks.
Most are high enough to allow a man of average height to stand in and often deep enough to avoid the IDF's bunker-busting bombs, which can typically penetrate up to 40 metres. The deepest tunnel discovered by the IDF so far was about 70 metres below ground. READ MORE: Inside Israel's tunnel war in Gaza: The terrifying reality of clearing Hamas's 'city beneath a city' that stretches for miles - as witnessed by The Mail's NICK CRAVEN who joined IDF soldiers who found at least 17 subterranean fortifications Advertisement An important question remains: how is Hamas able to spend millions of pounds acquiring the thousands of tonnes of concrete, millions of kilowatts of electricity and millions of litres of fuel and oxygen needed to...
'This is why they steal fuel from Gazan civilians and humanitarian aid deliveries – whether it is desalination materials for water or, most terribly, fuel to power generators for hospitals.' ISIS made extensive use of tunnels when it held the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Hamas has clearly imbibed the lessons learned there, too.
But it is not just ISIS that has helped Hamas, but an entity far more powerful and dangerous: Iran. 'Over 90 per cent of Hamas's military budget comes from Iran,' the senior official tells me. READ MORE: The nightmare 300-mile maze of Hamas tunnels standing in the way of Israeli troops: How IDF soldiers face bloodbath hand-to-hand combat with terrorists in 40ft deep 'Gaza Metro' rat-run rigged with booby-traps Advertisement 'Never forget, the tunnels are the oxygen of a terrorist group that has sophisticated military infrastructure – and all of it is inside these tunnels,' says Richemond-Barak.
This type of warfare poses a serious risk to the IDF. When fighting underground, the military must rethink all of its assumptions: Which soldiers it deploys; how it equips and trains them; what tactical guidelines it will put in place. The Americans used B-52 bombers to try to take out the Viet Cong tunnels in Vietnam, while last year the Russians relentlessly bombed the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.
Most are high enough to allow a man of average height to stand in and often deep enough to avoid the IDF's bunker-busting bombs, which can typically penetrate up to 40 metres. The deepest tunnel discovered by the IDF so far was about 70 metres below ground
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