Middle East
Report: Israel has pumps for tunnel flooding
An Israeli soldier stands in an underground tunnel found beneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. photo
© Victor R. Caivano/AP/dpa
Israel has built a system that could flood the network of tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip and drive Hamas from its underground hideout, according to a report. There are discussions about the tactics.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US government officials, it is not known whether the Israeli government intends to use this tactic. Israel has neither made a final decision nor ruled out such a plan, the officials were quoted as saying. Israeli army spokesman Richard Hecht simply said: “We are using all the means at our disposal to take action against the tunnel system.”
The Israeli armed forces completed the assembly of large seawater pumps north of the Al-Shati refugee camp in mid-November, it said. Each of at least five pumps could draw water from the Mediterranean and pump thousands of cubic meters of water per hour into the tunnels, flooding them within weeks, the newspaper reported.
Discussion about tactics
With such a tactic, Israel would be able to destroy the tunnels and drive the terrorists from their underground hideout, it said. On the other hand, it would threaten Gaza’s water supply, the US officials were quoted as saying. Israel first informed the United States of this option in early November, sparking a discussion that weighed the feasibility and environmental impact against the military value of eliminating the tunnels, the report said.
The Israeli army says it has found more than 800 tunnel shafts since the start of the Gaza war. The military announced on Sunday that around 500 of them had already been destroyed. Some of the tunnel shafts connected strategic Hamas facilities underground, it said in a statement. Many kilometers of underground tunnel routes were destroyed. The information could not initially be independently verified.