2024-01-29 13:21:48
Israeli tanks pass back and forth, tirelessly digging into loose and unstable ground. In this district of Khan Younes, in the south of Gaza, there is only desolation, mud and gutted buildings, riddled with impacts, emptied of all population.
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In the middle of a crater, the entrance to a tunnel. The army on Saturday took a group of journalists to the heart of the city where fighting has been concentrated for several weeks, to show them what it claims to be a former underground Hamas command center.
The tank guns are pointed towards the buildings, for fear that fighters from the Palestinian Islamist movement are still hiding there. Soldiers on foot, concentrated, comb the surroundings and monitor the buildings in the distance through telescopes. A backhoe is working.
This scene of desolation is located a few hundred meters from Salaheddine Avenue, which runs through the Gaza Strip from north to south. A city center, or rather what remains of it.
The soldiers slide their feet into the tunnel before entering completely and accessing concrete corridors, the ceilings just high enough for a helmeted man to stand. They are equipped with night vision goggles.
The corridor leads to a large room, the presumed command center, which the army says is located under a cemetery. The journalists did not see him before entering the tunnel. The information is impossible to verify. No one knows what’s left of it.
“We are in the middle of a cemetery in Khan Yunis and this cemetery is a military complex. A Hamas military complex, above and below ground,” says Dan Goldfus, an Israeli commander.
“Look at the time, money and effort that went into this tunnel,” the officer with the salt-and-pepper beard said as he progressed through the tunnel.
80% of the network intact
In a large kitchen, dirty plates were left behind, along with empty and oxidized cans. A little further on, a sink connected to pipes that rise to the surface.
Sounds of explosions and gunfire ring out. Soldiers continue to search for other entrances to the tunnel network.
Since the 2014 war, Hamas has dug underground routes in the Gaza Strip, nicknamed the “Gaza Metro”, in which Hamas fighters hole up, sometimes up to 30 or 40 meters underground, out of reach. strikes.
Trapdoor systems allow the rocket launchers to be taken out, fired a few salvos and then hidden once more.
The Israeli army intensely bombed the network in 2021. Although part of these tunnels has probably been known to its services since that time, they have not been able to establish a precise map. And the tunnels have become one of its major targets since the start of the war.
A study published on October 17 by the Modern War Institute of the American Academy West Point mentioned 1,300 tunnels, for more than 500 kilometers of underground corridors.
The Israeli army claimed at the beginning of December to have discovered more than 800, of which 500 were destroyed. But on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal cited US and Israeli officials admitting that 80% of the network was intact.
In response, Israel vowed to “annihilate” the Islamist movement – which it classifies as terrorist like the United States and the European Union – and launched a vast military operation in Gaza, which left 26,422 people dead, the vast majority women, children and adolescents, according to the latest report on Sunday from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“Every war has its specificities,” concludes Dan Goldfus, once he returns to the surface. “Those of this war are that the maneuvers are carried out on the surface and underground.”
He adds: “we are meeting our objectives. Slowly”.
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