‘Hamas never stopped digging’: Ex-hostage warns tunnel network under Gaza still growing

Recently released hostage Tal Shoham warned in an interview aired Saturday that the Hamas terror group has continued to expand its vast underground tunnel network in Gaza unabated, despite the long months of war with Israel inside the Palestinian enclave.

Shoham was returned to Israel on February 22, after having been abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023, while visiting his wife’s parents.

His wife Adi was also taken hostage, along with their two children Yahel, then 3, and Naveh, 8. The three were released during the weeklong truce in November 2023.

He opened up about his 505 days in Hamas captivity, starting from the moment of the abduction itself, in an interview with Fox News, aired on Saturday evening.

He told the US news outlet that he didn’t initially know what had become of his wife and children, as he had been taken hostage separately after he stepped outside to surrender, hoping it would spare the lives of his loved ones.

Recalling the experience, Shoham said that as he went outside, he was met with “about 40 armed terrorists,” some of whom were filming him while others laughed.

He recalled being driven into Gaza and hauled out of the trunk of the car he was transported in, at which point his captors told him to kneel. He refused.

“I said ‘I can’t control whether you kill me or not,’ and I raised by hands — but I refused to kneel,’” he told Fox, adding that he told his captors: “If you want to kill me, kill me, but you will not execute me like ISIS.”

After refusing to kneel, Shoham said he was marched through the streets of Gaza to the jeers of watching crowds.

“I just waved and smiled,” he recalled. “I didn’t show fear.”

As he was taken hostage ahead of his family, Shoham said he spent his first 50 days in captivity not knowing whether his wife and children were alive or dead.

“Never in my life have I experienced suffering like this,” he said of the uncertainty, which was compounded by the intense loneliness he felt, as he was at that point being held alone. To survive, Shoham said, he had to “accept that my family was dead.”

“I sat on the floor and imagined myself at their funeral. I stood in front of a grave — one large for my wife, and two small for my children — and I eulogized each of them,” he recalled. “I sobbed but didn’t let my captors see me cry. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, burying my family in my mind.”

On his 50th day in captivity, however, Shoham received a letter from his wife informing him that she and their two children were alive, and being released from captivity.

Knowing that his family was safe was the “most important thing,” Shoham says. “I didn’t need to be a father and husband protecting them anymore. Now, I could focus on my war, the one I knew how to fight, the one for survival.”

After 34 days alone in captivity, Shoham’s captors brought two other hostages — Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal — to the house he was being held in. The three remained there until June 2024, when they were transferred to an underground tunnel, joining Omer Wenkert there. He remained there until his release.

‘Hamas never stopped digging tunnels’

Shoham said that while in that tunnel he was guarded by captors who were responsible for digging the tunnels that make up Hamas’s vast underground network in the Palestinian enclave.

The terror operatives would dig constantly, said Shoham. “Hamas never stopped digging tunnels. Not for a single day.”

While the exact length and breadth of Hamas’s tunnel network is unclear, a January 2024 New York Times report based on the estimates of Israeli defense officials placed it at around 350 to 450 miles long.

At the time, the defense officials said there were roughly 5,700 separate shafts leading down to the tunnels.

In July 2024, it was reported that, despite the long months of fighting in the Gaza Strip, the tunnel network was still in a “good functional state,” as even many of the areas targeted by the IDF had been fixed.

Shoham, like many other released hostages, recounted that food was scarce throughout his captivity.

When he was first captured, he was held in the home of a Gazan family, where for the first three days he received pita bread.

Then, he said, “food supplies dwindled.”

After that, he would receive as little as “three spoons of avocado and three dates” per day, “or half an orange from a tree in the yard.”

He estimated that at that stage, he was getting just 300 calories a day — a fraction of the roughly 2,400 calories a man his age is supposed to consume on average.

After moving him to the tunnel with three other hostages, Shoham’s captors would give him some 300 milliliters of water a day — for both drinking and washing — and plain rice.

The diet left him severely malnourished, he told Fox, and after months in which he was getting progressively more unwell, his captors finally brought a doctor to see him. By that point, he said, he had already developed a severe infection, and had internal bleeding in his legs.

“My legs turned blue, yellow, and purple with internal bleeding,” he said. The doctor gave him and the other hostages blood thinners to prevent clots, as well as seven days’ worth of vitamin supplements to combat the malnutrition.

“It tasted like dog food, but it dramatically improved our condition,” he said.

Despite the supplements, Shoham was severely underweight upon his release from Gaza.

Shoham and Wenkert were released from captivity on February 22, while David and Gilboa Dalal were kept behind, and are among the 59 remaining hostages in Gaza.

Gaza terror groups are still holding 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire that began in January. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.