Israel released a video today, Sunday, depicting what it described as a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants beneath the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, which is central to its search and destroy missions against Hamas in a war that has entered its seventh week. While Hamas acknowledges that it has a network of hundreds of kilometers of secret tunnels and shelters throughout the Palestinian territory, it denies that these tunnels exist within civilian infrastructure such as hospitals.
In an update regarding operations at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the Israeli military stated that "its engineers discovered a tunnel 10 meters deep extending 55 meters to an explosion-resistant door." A military statement accompanied by the video, which shows a narrow passage with an arched concrete ceiling ending at a gray door, noted that "Hamas uses this type of door to prevent Israeli forces from entering command centers and assets belonging to Hamas underground." The statement did not address what lies beyond the door. It mentioned that the tunnel was accessed through an opening discovered in a small building containing munitions within the Al-Shifa complex.
