Israel discovers the largest Hamas tunnel found so far, 4 kilometers long

The Israeli Armed Forces revealed this Sunday a tunnel dug by Hamas, the largest located so far, which is 4 kilometers long and in some points reaches 50 meters deep.

The tunnel is located near the Erez Pass, in the north of the Gaza Strip, next to the border fence that separates the enclave from Israeli territory, and due to its width it would even have the capacity to allow the passage of vehicles. It was also used to transport weapons.

The "attack tunnel", however, does not reach Israeli territory. One of the entrances is located about 400 meters from the Erez crossing, which was used to control the passage of Palestinians into Israeli territory mainly to work.

Erez has been closed since October 7, when Hamas militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed around 1,200 people, sparking the current Israeli retaliatory military offensive that has already claimed the lives of more than 19,000 people, most of them civilians. .

The tunnel has several branches and junctions, water pipes, electricity and communication lines, as well as armored doors designed to prevent the entry of Israeli forces.

"Its width suggests that they wanted to use it for vehicle raids against civilians in communities near the Gaza border," explained a military spokesman, Haim Cohen, quoted by 'The Times of Israel' newspaper.

The Israeli Armed Forces have also published images and videos of how the tunnel was built. Hamas members displaced from Khan Younis used specialized machinery for their excavation, according to the military statement.

Construction would be carried out by Mohamed Sinwar, commander of Hamas' Southern Brigade and brother of Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. The work used tunnel boring machines secretly introduced into the Gaza Strip and would have a budget of millions of dollars.

Israel had previously reported attacks launched by Hamas militias from underground tunnels and also the deaths of several militants inside these facilities dug into the ground. Last week it was reported that 800 tunnel entrances had been discovered since the start of the ground offensive on the Gaza Strip and 500 have already been destroyed.

In addition, seawater pumping has been "successfully" used in the tunnel network to disable these facilities and force the militiamen to come to the surface. A military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, when questioned about the risk of affecting the hostages, responded on Thursday that these actions are undertaken taking into account the information from the intelligence services to avoid harming the 128 kidnapped people who are estimated to remain in the hostages. Gaza Strip.