From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
IDF releases footage of tunnel in which 6 hostages were held, executed
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The IDF releases a video showing the inside of a Hamas tunnel in the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, where six Israeli hostages were murdered by Hamas terrorists and shortly after were found and recovered by Israeli troops.
Hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi were believed to have been executed in the tunnel by their captors on August 29, before being discovered by troops less than two days later.
The video taken by IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari was recently shown to the families of the hostages and to members of the Israeli cabinet.
The tunnel where their bodies were found was a narrow 120-meter-long passageway — not tall enough to stand in without bending over — that connected parts of a large underground network in the Tel Sultan neighborhood, which according to the IDF belonged to Hamas’s Rafah Brigade.
Inside the tunnel, located some 20 meters underground, the IDF found food and equipment that it assessed were used by the Hamas terrorists and the Israeli hostages to survive underground for extended periods, at least several weeks.
“Here you see their blood on the floor. Here you see their last moments and here they were brutally murdered,” Hagari says in a Hebrew-language version of the video.
