IDF destroys massive underground tunnel dubbed ‘Sinwar’s secret’ near Israeli border crossing
Tunnel was discovered in December and its large enough for cars to drive through
The IDF destroyed the largest tunnel system it has yet to uncover in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military announced on Monday.
Over the last several weeks, the IDF has been exploring and destroying the tunnel, which didn’t cross into Israeli territory but was designed for use in strategic offensive attacks.
Some portions of the tunnel were blown up in controlled explosions, while other parts were filled with concrete.
The tunnel system, which was discovered last December, had several branches and ran for about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) in length, at a depth of up to 50 meters (165 feet) underground.
Parts of the tunnel were large enough for motorcycles and cars to drive through, with one shaft ending about 400 meters (a quarter mile) from the Israeli-Erez border crossing in the northern Gaza Strip.
The primary tunnel was three meters high and several meters wide at some points and is the most extensive tunnel discovered in the Gaza Strip to date, IDF officers told Israel's KAN news outlet.
The underground system was seen as a strategic asset by the Hamas terror organization but wasn’t utilized on Oct. 7, possibly to keep the option open for use in another large-scale attack against Israeli communities in the future.
“Its width indicates that it was intended to have been used for vehicle-borne raids against civilians in the Gaza border communities,” said Col. Haim Cohen, the commander of the IDF Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade, in a video statement.
IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Daniel Hagari dubbed the tunnel “Sinwar’s secret,” in a nod to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his brother Muhammad, responsible for the construction project which is estimated to have cost millions of dollars.
“This is a flagship project of Hamas. It is a branched underground network in which construction dozens of terrorists participated and millions of dollars were invested. This is not a tunnel, this is a city, a terrorist city that Hamas dug,” Hagari stated in December.
The tunnel was located and destroyed in a joint effort by the engineering unit of the Gaza Division, the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit, and several other units of the army and the Ministry of Defense.
The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
