Israel destroys 10km Hamas tunnel in northern Gaza

The IDF claimed that the extensive underground network linked a cancer hospital and a university

Israel’s military say they have destroyed an extensive underground tunnel that was used by Hamas, with openings leading to a cancer hospital and a university in the northern Gaza Strip.

The tunnel, said to be 10km (6 miles) long, ran between the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital and Israa University, located south of Gaza City, up to the northern neighbourhood of Zeitoun. The army unit in charge of locating and destroying tunnel networks said its discovery was part of a wider effort over the past month to find the subterranean network that connects the north and south of the Gaza Strip.

“During our raids, we discovered an 18-metre-deep tunnel under the hospital with two exists both in the southern and northern parts of the hospital,” said a combatant identified only as Major Ron, the chief operations officer of the Nahal Brigade combat team.

The area around the tunnel’s most northern exit in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City has seen heavy fighting over the past week as Israel struggles to maintain hold of the neighbourhood first occupied in the early days of the war in October. On Monday, Israeli forces killed more than 30 Palestinian gunmen there as Hamas fighters waged a renewed battle to take back the city.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) say the latest tunnel they had discovered was used by the group’s Zeitoun battalion and other brigades to move around the Gaza Strip.

They added that it contained subterranean rooms including toilets, storage areas, and the bodies of Palestinian operatives who fell during raids by Israeli troops.

“Throughout the entire war, we’ve witnessed Hamas using civilian infrastructure, ie, hospitals, kindergartens, schools and more, to dig tunnels and dispose of weapons, which we also found inside the Turkish hospital,” Major Ron said in a video statement released by the Israeli army.

The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital has not been functioning since late November after running out of fuel. It was the only hospital in the enclave that offered cancer treatment, and has been unable to resume treatment after being cordoned off by Israeli forces.

Subhi Skeik, the hospital’s director, said the hospital had nothing to do with any such Hamas activity.

“While being at the hospital, I didn’t see anything directly or indirectly in my knowledge about the compound of the hospital. Nothing is there,” he told The Times.

A video released by the IDF pans from the Turkish hospital, built in 2017, across the sand dunes dotted with Israeli tanks and down into pit which shows a small, vertical tunnel shaft. On the other side, the video circles a hole in the ground closer to the hospital building and cuts to a deep hole in the ground, marked by an orange plastic chair.

The tunnel was destroyed, according to the IDF, which released a video showing two large explosions emanating from the dunes.

Israel said on Monday that its army had readied a plan to evacuate Gazans before a feared invasion of Rafah in the south, which Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, warned would “put the final nail in the coffin” of aid operations. Nearly 30,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

After speaking with the families of abducted soldiers, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, said: “The full return of civilians to the northern Gaza Strip will only take place after the return of all the abductees. Even if we have to lay down fire temporarily, we will fight again until the last of the abductees is returned.”

Many of the major Gaza City hospitals including al-Shifa, al-Quds and the Turkish Friendship hospital, have been forced to close under fire. Skeik said they were looking to resume their work as soon as a ceasefire, currently being brokered through indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, came into effect.

“Let us give the people of Gaza the right to health. Let us give them the right to live like other people, especially these cancer patients.”

On Monday Mohammad Shtayyeh, the Palestinian prime minister in the occupied West Bank, handed in his resignation to President Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority. He cited “the new reality in the Gaza Strip” and “the escalation in the West Bank and Jerusalem”, where there has also been daily violence since the war in Gaza began.

The Times