The entrance to the tunnel built by Hamas opens less than four hundred meters from what was supposed to be the most effective protective barrier in the world, a concrete wall about ten meters high, equipped with sensors high-tech and punctuated at regular intervals with powerful towers. Behind the barrier, the imposing Israeli checkpoint of Erez, located to the north of the enclave. Hamas fighters appeared there on October 7 to carry out the most violent attack ever perpetrated on Israeli territory by a Palestinian group, killing 1,139 people to date. They passed between the high walls, blew up the thick fence, invaded barracks and kibbutz, killed soldiers and civilians, and took hostages.
Did the kidnappers take them back into the tunnel? This is what Colonel Olivier Rafowicz, one of the spokespersons for the Israeli army who is organizing the visit, Wednesday December 27, for around twenty representatives of the international press, still prohibited from free access to the Palestinian enclave by the Hebrew state. “The network occupies an area of 1.5 square kilometers. He was not fully invested. Around 4 kilometers of galleries were explored. Hamas designed and centralized the tunnel construction systemassures the spokesperson. It was Mohammed, the brother of Yahya Sinouar, who took charge of the manufacture of it, according to documents we found inside. » The army released a video recovered from these facilities, showing the brother of the Hamas leader in a car driving inside a dark conduit. She also claims to have found weapons and ammunition there, and ensures that certain accesses were closed by armored doors. Some conduits go down up to fifty meters deep. No exit leads into Israeli territory. It is the longest network discovered to date.
The entrance is located at the bottom of a large excavation dug in the ocher earth. At the threshold of the conduit, a square shaft falls vertically to an unknown depth. The tunnel itself descends steeply, on an east-west axis, parallel to the separation wall with Israel. “It is the main artery, from which several veins branch off. It is a typical Hamas construction, different from the Hezbollah tunnels, on the border between Israel and Lebanon., explains the officer. Narrow piles of concrete top a vault made of the same material. At the top of the gallery, a ventilation tube. Along the sides run electrical and communication cables.
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