IDF says it razed major tunnel in Rafah after Hamas operatives provided location
Army destroys infrastructure in Gaza after getting intel from men who surrendered
The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that during recent operations in southern Gaza’s Rafah, two Hamas operatives surrendered to troops and provided intelligence on a major tunnel in the area, which was then demolished.
The two Hamas terror operatives were captured by soldiers of the 188th Armored Brigade and handed over to the Shin Bet. During their interrogation, the military said the pair provided “significant intelligence, pointing to the location of underground infrastructure in the area.”
The tunnel, which was located shortly afterward in Rafah’s Shaboura camp, served “key terrorists” in Hamas, the IDF said.
Combat engineers of the elite Yahalom unit mapped out the tunnel, which spanned around a kilometer and was some 25 meters below ground. The military said the tunnel featured rooms to reside in, a bathroom, a kitchenette, blast doors and several entrance shafts.
The tunnel was then demolished, the army added.
Meanwhile, sources close to the Hamas terror group said a delegation held two meetings with Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Doha this week but they produced no breakthrough in the search for a Gaza truce.
This video published by the IDF on May 9, 2025, shows the inside of a major Hamas tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah, and it being demolished. (Israel Defense Forces)
“Egyptian officials met twice with a high-level Hamas delegation led by [chief negotiator] Khalil al-Hayya [and] Qatari officials on Wednesday and Thursday in Doha,” one source told AFP.
A second source said the talks were “serious” but made “no concrete progress.”
On Friday morning the IDF said two soldiers were killed the previous day and at least six were wounded in separate incidents amid fighting in southern Gaza. The soldiers were named as Sgt. Yishai Elyakim Urbach, 20, of the Combat Engineering Corps’ 605th Battalion, from Zichron Yaakov, and Staff Sgt. Yam Frid, 21, of the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, from Sal’it.
The incidents brought Israel’s death toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 418.
The IDF and Shin Bet announced Thursday that a Hamas terrorist involved in the kidnapping of Yaffa Adar, 85, during the October 7, 2023, onslaught was killed in an airstrike in Gaza City a day earlier. The terrorist was identified as Mohammed Rasmi Marzouk Baraka, a member of Hamas’s intelligence division.
Baraka could be seen in infamous footage showing the abduction of Adar from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Adar was released from captivity in November 2023.
The second terrorist in the car, Asim Hatab, was reportedly killed several months following Adar’s abduction, though the military has not confirmed this.
The IDF also said Thursday it struck over 150 targets in the Gaza Strip in the previous 72 hours, including terror cells, buildings used by terror groups and other infrastructure. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reported nearly 200 dead over the course of the three days.
For weeks, UN agencies and other humanitarian organizations have warned of dwindling supplies of everything from fuel and medicine to food and clean water in the coastal territory that is home to 2.4 million Palestinians.
“It is unacceptable that humanitarian aid is not allowed into the Gaza Strip,” Pierre Krahenbuhl, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told reporters in Geneva Thursday.
The situation in Gaza is on a “razor’s edge” and “the next few days are absolutely decisive,” he added.
Israel and the US plan to resume providing aid to the Strip but seek to do so through private contractors to secure aid distribution hubs within the Strip, so that aid is not hoarded by Hamas.
The Times of Israel Community.