Israeli forces battling Hamas said they had uncovered an unusually large concrete and iron-girded tunnel at the Gaza-Israel border, designed to transport carloads of militant fighters.
Chief Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the tunnel was 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles long, stretching from Gaza City - once the heart of Hamas governance and now a devastated combat zone – to the Erez crossing at the Israeli border.
HAGARI, IN FRONT OF REPORTERS: "Without demolishing the tunnel project of Hamas, we cannot demolish Hamas.”
Razing or disabling hundreds of kilometers of underground passages and bunkers is among the aims of the Israeli offensive.
The military showed reporters the exit point of the tunnel, located just 100 meters south of the checkpoint at Erez.
The Erez crossing is one of the sites Hamas overran on October 7, killing 1200 Israelis and taking 240 others hostage.
Hagari said it was the biggest tunnel Israeli forces have found near the border, without specifying whether it was used by Hamas for the October 7 attack.
Generally the tunnels shown to the media by the group, or by the Israeli military after their discovery, have been narrow and low - designed for single-file movement of gunmen on foot. The tunnel shown by Hagari had shafts plunging vertically downward that, he said, suggested it was part of a wider network.
Hamas did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Israeli account.
Since the October 7th attack, Israel has besieged Gaza and laid much of the Palestinian enclave to waste. Around 19,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials, with thousands more suspected buried in the rubble of Israeli air strikes.
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