Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
The chief of staff of the Iranian army claims that there are over 400 kilometers (248 miles) of tunnels underneath the northern section of the Gaza Strip.
“Vehicles and motorcycles can pass through some of them,” says Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri at a conference on civil defense in Tehran, according to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency.
A member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group walks in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip, on April 17, 2022, during a media tour amid escalating violence with Israel. (Mahmud Hams/AFP)
Some of the tunnels have an entrance inside Israel, the commander claims.
Israel has touted the underground sensors of the Gaza barrier, officially completed in 2021, as having the ability to detect digging under the border, though the fence’s aboveground flaws were exposed on October 7. During Israel’s war with Gaza in 2014, terrorists used cross-border tunnels to stage a number of small-scale attacks.
Bagheri claims the reason the Israeli army has waited to launch a full-scale ground invasion into Gaza is because it knows that such an operation will mark “another defeat.”
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From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
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