A MILITARY expert has revealed how Israel could use sewage to flush out Hamas terrorists from their underground tunnels.
The complex network has sprawled since the terror group clawed control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and is now feared to be being used to hide terrified hostages.
ReutersIsrael could use sewage to flush out Hamas terrorists from their underground tunnels[/caption]
ReutersWorkers would haul buckets of sewage-soaked soil from the tunnel shafts like this one[/caption]
ReutersIsrael could also tackle Hamas’ underground tunnel web by sending special forces down, the expert said[/caption]
Military expert Chris Morris explained how Israeli forces could copy the move previously made by Egypt by throwing sewage down the tunnels.
“It’s a very effective solution,” Morris told Sky News.
“It would make sense militarily for them to use it should the conditions converge.”
But it wouldn’t be ideal “in terms of optics” and could add to the building humanitarian crisis spreading across the besieged enclave, he added.
The pungent tactic has been previously used by the Egyptian military to shut down smuggling tunnels connecting Sinai and Gaza in 2013.
Workers would haul buckets of sewage-soaked soil from the tunnel shafts.
Advisers to the then-Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi said the government was determined to shut the tunnels to block the destabilising flow of weapons and militants into Sinai from Gaza, the New York Times reported.
The tunnels were deemed a vital source of certain imports to Gaza and smuggling-tax revenue for Hamas.
Morris also listed four more ways in which Israel could tackle Hamas’ underground tunnel web.
These would include sending special forces down, destroying entrances into the tunnels, blocking entrances with foam bombs, and using sophisticated weapons to target the tunnels from the air.
It comes as Israeli forces are gearing up to storm Hamas’ tunnel network and rescue hundreds of hostages as hopes fade for a deal with the terror group.
Gershon Baskin, who oversaw the last hostage exchange with Hamas in 2011, has warned that IDF troops could storm the tunnels in hours.
Attempts to secure the release of the 239 Israelis and foreigners held in the underground maze are growing evermore “critical” as the ground operation in Gaza intensifies.
The chance of securing them safely fades daily as IDF troops and tanks continue to blitz the Gaza Strip.
Baskin has even warned that Hamas terrorists may kill the hostages in response to IDF forces hunting them through the tunnels.
Dubbed the “Gaza Metro”, the complex network is stretched out as a 311- mile labyrinth riddled with deadly traps.
The negotiating expert, now 67, helped arrange the return of an Israeli soldier in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011.
Baskin told The Times: “Within the next few days or even hours, if there isn’t a deal for the release of hostages by agreement, military operations to go into the places hostages might be held will begin.”
“First of all we don’t know what the results of those [military operations] will be, if the hostages will be freed or killed in the crossfire, and Hamas may also respond by killing hostages in response to Israelis going after them in the tunnels.”
Many of the prisoners released in 2011, including Hamas ringleader Yahya Sinwar, went on to carry out the October 7 attacks that killed at least 1,200 Israelis.
After storming the border, Hamas gunmen massacred hundreds of men, women and children in towns and at a music festival – while also taking hundreds hostage.
Now almost 40 days later the bomb-blitzed Gaza Strip has been “split in two” by IDF forces who have relentlessly pushed ahead with their ground invasion in an attempt to wipe out Hamas.
On Monday they claimed to have discovered one of Hamas’ lairs and weapons headquarters set in a hospital basement in Gaza.
They suspect the terror group to be using hospitals in the strip, in which hundreds of civilians are trapped, as covers for command centres.
The IDF said on Monday that troops were fired at by Hamas fighters from the entrance of Al Quds hospital as they “embedded” themselves among civilians.
Scores of IDF troops and tanks also surrounded Gaza’s biggest medical facility, the Al Shifa hospital, amid fears Hamas’ HQ is hidden in the tunnels underneath.
Like Al Quds, it has stopped accepting new patients after its fuel ran out and patients are struggling without enough food, water or medical supplies.
TWITTER, ALFAIOMIDubbed the ‘Gaza Metro’, Hamas’s complex tunnel network is stretched out as a 311- mile labyrinth riddled with deadly traps[/caption]
ReutersA view of what the Israeli military says is a tunnel that is connected in the direction of a hospital in Gaza[/caption]