Israeli military have started setting up pumps to flood Hamas's tunnels in Gaza with seawater. Photo / X, Dr Eli David
Israeli military have started setting up pumps to flood Hamas's tunnels in Gaza with seawater. Photo / X, Dr Eli David
Israeli troops have been photographed setting up pumps to flood Hamas’ tunnels with seawater.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released images on Wednesday of dozens of soldiers laying pipes on Gaza’s Mediterranean Coast.
It was reported earlier this week that the IDF was considering whether to flush out the 482km tunnel network and had completed construction on five pumps about 1.6km north of the Al-Shati refugee camp.
The pumps could move thousands of cubic metres of water per hour but experts warn the move could damage Gaza’s water supply.
Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, the IDF’s chief of staff, said on Tuesday that flooding the tunnels was “a good idea” when asked about the reports.
“Any means which gives us an advantage over the enemy, deprives it of these assets, is a means that we are evaluating using,” he said, without giving any further specifics.
Israeli media also released footage of troops working on the pipes underground, with black pipes swelling with water after a valve was turned.
Any move to flood the tunnels is complicated by the fact that Hamas is understood to be holding many of the remaining 138 hostages within them.
Prof Eilon Adar, of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, said the amount of damage to Gaza’s water supply could be significant.
“The negative impact on groundwater quality would last for several generations, depending on the amount that infiltrates into the subsurface,” he told the Times of Israel, adding the long-term effects would be “politically and morally incorrect”.
Netanyahu said Israeli troops had surrounded the house of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 terror attack, in the main southern city of Khan Younis.
What you see in the picture are huge pipes that the IDF connects to 5 huge water pumps to turn the tunnels in Gaza into a death trap and get the rats out of the holes. 🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/G550GFoFOJ
“I said our forces can reach anywhere in the Gaza strip. Now they are surrounding Sinwar’s house. His house is not his fortress ... but it’s only a matter of time until we get him,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday during a meeting with the head of the Red Cross.
Our job is to kill Sinwar
Responding to Netanyahu’s remarks, Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s chief spokesman, said Sinwar was underground.
“I won’t elaborate on where exactly and what we know. Our job is to get to Sinwar and kill him.”
The IDF destroyed Sinwar’s house in the last bout of fighting in 2021, with the Hamas leader later posing for photos sitting on an armchair in the rubble.
Israeli forces were fighting door-to-door in Khan Younis on Wednesday, with the army claiming it had struck 250 targets in the Strip over the past 24 hours.
Troops found one of the largest ever weapons caches in the Gaza Strip, the IDF said. Hundreds of RPGs and dozens of anti-tank missiles were found in a depot near a health clinic and a school, a statement read.
Footage was released of soldiers from the 460th Armored Brigade and Nahal Brigade’s 50th Battalion carrying giant rockets on their shoulders on to waiting trucks.
At a news conference, Volker Turk, the UN’s human rights chief, said: “Palestinians in Gaza are living in utter, deepening horror”. More than 16,000 have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-run health authorities.
Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, said Israel wanted the war to end, but added “it can only end in a way that ensures that Hamas can never attack our people again”.
At a private meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday, hostages and their families furiously accused the prime minister of putting politics above rescue efforts. Some also said they were inadvertently fired on by the IDF, according to a leaked recording obtained by Ynet news.
“[I was in] a hiding place that was shelled and we had to be smuggled out and we were wounded,” a recently freed female hostage said.
“You claim that there is intelligence. But the fact is that we are being shelled.”
The leaked recordings reflect the immense anger felt by many Israelis towards Netanyahu and growing public support for prioritising the release of the remaining hostages.
“You put politics above the return of the kidnapped,” an unidentifed woman told Netanyahu. “Return them all and not in a month, two months or a year.”
An Israeli Apache helicopter fires a missile in direction of the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP
US President Joe Biden said that Hamas had repeatedly raped women and mutilated their bodies during its assault on southern Israel, citing survivors and witnesses.
“It is appalling,” he told a political fundraiser in Boston.
According to Israeli reports citing a doctor who treated hostages, 10 former captives, both male and female, said they had been sexually assaulted after their kidnapping.
