Hamas Tunnels Are Huge and Hard to Imagine
One of the Hamas tunnel network. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/Files
- The Israeli military is expected to have great difficulty defusing Hamas' tunnels, which it claims are 500 kilometers long. Avi Issacharoff, a journalist and creator of a television series about Gaza, called the tunnel infrastructure difficult to imagine.
"The tunnels are very dense, a very large system that allows Hamas to take people and hostages, as well as motorbikes, artillery, rockets and everything you can imagine," he said as quoted by detikINET from the Times of Israel, Tuesday (7/11/2023 ).
According to him, from his several visits as a journalist, the tunnel network is located throughout the Gaza Strip. "They (Hamas) are all underground, under the houses in Gaza City," he said.
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The Israeli army itself is trying to destroy the Hamas tunnel even though it is predicted that it will encounter many difficulties. Hamas fighters can attack and immediately hide in a wide network of tunnels. Israeli soldiers cannot go in carelessly or become easy targets.
"Most military doctrines advise against sending soldiers into tunnels. Why? Because of the very high risk of an underground environment with soldiers inside," said Dr Daphné Richemond-Barak, an underground warfare expert who teaches at Reichman University in Israel. .
"You need to develop special equipment for your soldiers. They need to get oxygen, they need to get special training, they need to be specially screened for cramped and confined environments like this," he explained.
If they dare go there, experts say they will probably send ground robots and drones first to find out about the situation and predict what will happen.