The Israeli army confirms it has started flooding Hamas tunnels
The Israeli army said on Tuesday it had started pumping water into the vast network of tunnels under Gaza, which Hamas has used to carry out attacks, store weapons and imprison Israeli hostages.
The army “has implemented new capabilities to neutralize the underground terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip by diverting large amounts of water into the tunnels,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
The statement was the military's first public acknowledgment that its engineers are flooding tunnels, a controversial strategy that some military officials say is ineffective and that the U.N. has warned could damage Gaza's drinking water and sewage systems.
Even before the war began in October, Israeli military officials had warned that Hamas' tunnels posed a major threat. In the months since Israel launched its ground offensive and began uncovering the underground network, military spokesmen have expressed surprise at the length, depth and quality of the tunnels. Some parts of the network are large enough for a truck to drive through them.
Elsewhere, the military has discovered underground chambers that they say hold some of the 240 hostages brought to Gaza after the October 7 Hamas-led attack.
Senior Israeli defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, estimated this month that the underground network is between 350 and 700 kilometers long – extraordinary figures for an area that is just 40 kilometers at its longest point. Two of the officials said there are nearly 5,700 individual shafts leading to the tunnels.
In December, a UN official in Gaza warned against it after reports that the army had begun experimenting with flooding some tunnels in northern Gaza.
“It will cause serious damage to Gaza's already fragile water and sewage infrastructure,” said Lynn Hastings, then the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.
In its statement Tuesday, the military said it selected tunnels for flooding after an “analysis of soil characteristics and water systems in the area to ensure no damage is caused to the area's groundwater.”
The military only began experimenting with flood tunnels after the war began, according to three military officials with knowledge of the effort, which was codenamed Atlantis. The goal was never to drown Hamas fighters seeking refuge in the underground network, but rather to flush them out, the officials said.
Overall, however, the project has had limited success, officials added. Despite pumping large amounts of water, many of the tunnels are porous, causing seepage into the surrounding ground rather than a flood through the passages.