One tunnel in the Gaza Strip was wide enough for a top Hamas official to drive a car through. Another tunnel stretched nearly three football fields long and was hidden beneath a hospital.
Under the house of a senior Hamas commander, the Israeli military found a spiral staircase leading to a tunnel approximately seven storeys deep.
These details and new information about the tunnels, some made public by the Israeli military and documented by video and photographs, underscore why the tunnels were considered a major threat to the Israeli military in Gaza, even before the war started.
But Israeli officials and soldiers who have since been inside the tunnels as well as current and former United States officials with experience in the region say the scope, depth and quality of the tunnels built by Hamas have astonished them.
Even some of the machinery that Hamas used to build the tunnels, observed in captured videos, has surprised the Israeli military.
The Israeli military now believes there are far more tunnels under Gaza.
In December, the network was assessed to be an estimated 402km long. Senior Israeli defence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, are currently estimating that the network is between 563km and 724km - extraordinary figures for a territory that at its longest point is only 40km. Two of the officials also assessed there are close to 5,700 separate shafts leading down to the tunnels.
The numbers could not be independently verified, and there are varying estimates by Israeli officials for the increased scope of the tunnel network, based on different intelligence.
この記事は The Straits Times の January 18, 2024 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は The Straits Times の January 18, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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