IDF Destroys Underwater Terror Tunnel

The Fellowship  |  June 11, 2018

While the IDF has spent the past four years finding and destroying terror tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel, it has just found a new type. The Jerusalem Post’s Anna Ahronheim reports that an underwater naval terror tunnel belonging to Hamas was just discovered and destroyed, though there may be more like it:

The tunnel, which was operational but did not actually extend into Israeli waters, would have enabled terrorists who would enter from a Hamas military post in the northern Gaza Strip to exit into the sea unnoticed, making it possible to carry out terrorist acts from the water.

The route of the tunnel, which reached a depth of two to three meters and was three kilometers from the border with Israel, was identified by the IDF as part of a campaign against Hamas’s naval force in the past year.

The tunnel was destroyed on June 3 by an air strike, which was part of the IDF’s retaliation to a barrage of mortars and rockets from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

According to a senior naval officer, the navy knew about the tunnel for several months and it was decided it was the “right time” to destroy it.

“The bottom line is that it was a tunnel that would allow for the departure of Hamas naval commando forces,” the officer said, adding that Hamas invested a great deal of money in it and trained forces in the tunnel.

“We estimate that there may be more such naval tunnels,” the senior officer said…