(Dan Tri) – The complex tunnel system in the Gaza Strip has been built by Hamas for many years and used in the confrontation with Israel.
Israeli soldiers discovered a Hamas bunker in the Gaza border area (Photo: Reuters).
Aware of the power of the Israeli army, for many years, Hamas forces have built a tunnel network as dense as an underground city in the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas military uses these tunnels as weapons warehouses, bunkers, command centers, and a lifeline for the transportation of clandestine weapons, including rocket launchers.
Some branches of this network lead directly from the Gaza Strip to the Israeli border area, causing southern Israelis to live in fear because raids can take place at any time.
Most tunnels are 1m wide and about 2.5m high, ensuring an adult man can easily walk through them.
The tunnel system is so dense and wide that Israeli forces call them a subway system, allowing Hamas forces to connect with each other and move safely without being detected.
Inside a Hamas tunnel (Photo: Reuters).
According to information from the Washington Post, in 2007, Hamas forces built more than 1,300 tunnels at a cost of about 1.25 billion USD.
The Israeli side says most of the tunnel network’s intersections are between Palestinian schools, mosques, hospitals and other civilian buildings.
Hamas has built three different types of tunnels in Gaza.
Eado Hecht, an Israeli defense analyst specializing in underground warfare, pointed out that there are tunnels that specialize in smuggling between Gaza and Egypt.
When the first information about this tunnel network emerged, Hamas leaders called them `innovation` and emphasized that they were `mainly defensive`.
In fact, Hamas forces have repeatedly used the secret and difficult-to-detect characteristics of this system for attack purposes.
Israel seeks to destroy Hamas’s maze of tunnels
Detecting and destroying Hamas tunnels is no small challenge for Israel (Photo: AFP).
According to Al Jazeera, during the ongoing fighting, the Israeli army also sought to destroy Hamas’s tunnel system in Gaza with bunker-busting bombs to prevent this force’s activities.
This type of bomb is embedded deep into the ground before exploding and can destroy solid underground targets.
This is not the first time Israel has targeted the tunnel network in Gaza.
At that time, Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told the Washington Post that the tunnel network was the `backbone` of Hamas’s activities.
However, in general, the Israeli army has difficulty defending because it is forced to have extremely difficult, accurate intelligence information or to break into every house in the Gaza Strip.
Destroying one tunnel branch does not mean that Israel can destroy the entire system, not to mention that Hamas forces will immediately be able to dig another tunnel branch instead.
A former Israeli official explained that for every tunnel destroyed, another tunnel appears.
