Israel published video on Sunday of what it described as a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants under the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital as well as closed-circuit television footage of “Hamas terrorists forcibly transporting hostages through” it, as search-and-destroy missions against Hamas have focused on the location in a war now in its seventh week.
While acknowledging that it has a network of hundreds of miles of secret tunnels, bunkers and access shafts throughout the Palestinian enclave, Hamas has denied that these are located in civilian infrastructure like hospitals.
In an update on operations in Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the Israeli military said its engineers had uncovered a tunnel 10 meters deep and running 55 meters to a blast-proof door.
“This type of door is used by the Hamas terrorist organization to block Israeli forces from entering the command centers and the underground assets belonging to Hamas,” said a military statement accompanied by video showing a narrow passage with arched concrete roofing, ending at a gray door.
The statement did not say what was beyond the door. The tunnel had been accessed through a shaft discovered in a shed within the Shifa compound that contained munitions, it said.
It also published video of what it identified as closed-circuit television footage from the Shifa Hospital with an Oct. 7 time stamp, “documenting Hamas terrorists forcibly transporting hostages [a Nepalese civilian and a Thai civilian] through the hospital.”
“These findings prove that the Hamas terrorist organization used the Shifa Hospital complex on the day of the massacre as terrorist infrastructure,” said the official Israel account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Newsmax staffer Jack Gournell contributed.
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