From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
IDF discloses new details about Hamas tunnel in which six Israeli hostages were executed, will release footage
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The IDF is set to release a video showing the inside of a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip where six Israeli hostages were murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before they were found and their bodies recovered by Israeli troops.
Hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi were believed to have been killed in the tunnel by their captors on August 29, before being discovered by troops two days later.
The tunnel was a small 120-meter-long passageway that connected parts of a large underground network in the Tel Sultan neighborhood, which according to the IDF belonged to Hamas’s Rafah Brigade. The tunnel network was one of the largest underground complexes found by the army in Gaza to date.
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. Among the items were dried food, water, a makeshift toilet, mattresses, and assault rifle magazines.
The military says it did not have any concrete or real-time intelligence on the six hostages being held there, but had general indications that Israeli abductees could be in the neighborhood, and therefore had operated carefully above ground and even more so underground.
On August 30, the IDF discovered a tunnel shaft, which had been blocked up by Hamas. A day later on Saturday, troops finally managed to enter the tunnel, where they discovered a locked blast door. Later in the day, the bodies of the six were found, and by early on September 1, they were extracted and brought to Israel for identification and burial.
Also on August 30, the IDF said, troops killed two Hamas gunmen who attempted to flee from the tunnel complex area. Their bodies were taken to Israel to run DNA testing to determine if they were the terrorists who killed the six hostages. The IDF believes that the six were killed by at least two terrorists.
Two days before the six hostages were murdered, on August 27, the IDF rescued hostage Farhan al-Qadi from a tunnel — part of the same network — located less than 700 meters away. There was no direct passage between the tunnel where al-Qadi was found and the bodies of the six hostages, as Hamas had blocked the route.
The video taken by IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari was shown to the families in recent days, as well as to members of the Israeli cabinet.
