Hamas militants have dug and built numerous tunnels from the Gaza Strip in the direction of Israel. Pictured is a tunnel discovered by Israeli forces near Israel’s Gaza border on Aug. 4, 2014.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been escalating in recent weeks, with intense air battles between the two sides. On Monday (17) morning, Israel launched another air strike to further destroy the underground tunnel network in Gaza completely. A few days ago, the Israeli army had pretended to send ground troops into Gaza and bombed the tunnels heavily after luring Hamas to move a large number of arms and weapons and soldiers underground.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel launched further airstrikes on the Gaza Strip early Monday morning with the goal of completely destroying the Hamas organization’s underground tunnel network in order to weaken Hamas’ ability to attack Israeli territory.
According to this report, the Israeli military used 54 warplanes during the overnight hours in a 20-minute battle that hit about nine miles of underground tunnels. The Israeli army says Hamas is using these underground tunnels to move weapons and fighters through the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said this comes after the Hamas militant group fired dozens more rockets into Israel Sunday night and early Monday morning, but they were intercepted by Israeli forces without causing casualties.
Indeed, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been going on for decades since it began in the 1980s, during which relations between the two sides have been at times moderate, at times tense and intense. In the last decade or so, the Hamas organization has dug a large number of tunnels leading from Gaza to Israel, often transferring rockets and military supplies underground to escape Israeli air strikes when the situation is not in its favor.
A few days ago, the Israeli military used a “ground attack” as a smokescreen to lure Hamas militants to move rocket launchers and other munitions into the tunnels on the 14th, and then launched a heavy bombardment against the network of tunnels that had long been under Israeli control, with Hamas suffering heavy losses in that battle.
According to publicly available information, in the early hours of May 14, the Israeli army suddenly announced to the media that Israeli ground forces were launching an offensive into the Gaza Strip. And Israeli tank artillery had really started shelling Hamas targets in Gaza; at the same time, Israel had mobilized more than 9,000 reservists and set the stage for an imminent major offensive on Gaza.
As a result, a large number of Hamas members rushed to hide rockets and rocket launchers in tunnels. When the Hamas personnel and arms entered the tunnels, the Israeli army suddenly launched 160 warplanes to bombard the tunnels in Gaza with high intensity. Within 40 minutes, 450 bombs, missiles and precision-guided bombs were fired, bringing down a large number of tunnels in Gaza. Hamas’s rocket manufacturing sites, equipment maintenance sites, rocket launching sites, command and control centers, etc. hidden in the tunnels were hit hard, while the Israeli forces did not really launch a large-scale ground attack that day.
It turns out that Israel has long discovered and located the location of Hamas tunnels through seismic sensors that monitor underground vibrations, and then set up this “invite the king into the jar” ploy to carry out a heavy and unexpected strike on Hamas’s underground network on the 14th.
On the evening of the next day (15), the IDF released an animated video demonstrating the inside of Hamas’ underground tunnel network and showing how the network was destroyed by Israeli forces.
According to a report in The Jerusalem Post on the 15th, an estimated 300-400 Hamas operatives died in this Israeli bombing of the underground tunnels. The damage was so heavy that Hamas paradoxically did not take any military action against Israel on the evening of May 14.
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