Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 27: Israel’s infantry battalion backed by fighter jets and drones carried out “targeted raid” in central Gaza, its second probing incursion in the last two days.
Since the October 7 attack by the Hamas on Israel, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said at least 7,326 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes on the besieged territory, mainly civilians including 3,038 children.
The Israeli military mounted the incursion deeper into Gaza as it readies for a ground offensive against Hamas. However, one of the biggest challenges the Israeli troops face is an extensive Hamas tunnel network where the group is said to have taken several hostages.
Israel has reportedly developed “sponge bombs” which create a sudden explosion of foam that rapidly expands and then hardens which could seal the openings of tunnels to fight Hamas through its tunnel network. Hamas reportedly has different kinds of tunnels — hundreds of kilometres long and up to 80 metres deep — running beneath the sandy 360-sq-km coastal strip and its borders.
According to reports, Israel has been testing the chemical grenades, which contain no explosives but are used to seal off gaps or tunnel entrances from which Hamas operatives may emerge. These devices are said to be encased within a protective plastic container that has a metal barrier that divides two distinct liquids. When activated, these liquids merge and advance toward their intended destination.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were seen deploying these devices during exercises in a mock tunnel system near the Gaza border in 2021. Among the elite units tasked with going underground is Yahalom, specialist commandos from Israel’s Combat Engineering Corps known as the “weasels”, who specialise in finding, clearing, and destroying the tunnels.
Hamas was created in Gaza in 1987 and reportedly started digging tunnels in the mid-1990s. The tunnel network is a key reason why Hamas is stronger in Gaza than in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Tunneling became easier in 2005 when Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza, and when Hamas won power in a 2006 election.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Friday issued a dire warning over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “As we speak people in Gaza are dying, they are not only dying from bombs and strikes, soon many more will die from the consequences of (the) siege imposed on the Gaza Strip,” said UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini.
The Israeli army Friday accused Hamas of using hospitals in the Gaza Strip as operational centres for directing attacks against Israel, as the war rages in the Palestinian territory. “Hamas wages war from hospitals” in Gaza, military spokesman Daniel Hagari told journalists, adding that the Islamist group was also using fuel stored in these facilities for carrying out its operations.
Hamas later fired back at the Israeli accusation of abusing hospitals to shield its war efforts calling the charges unfounded. “There’s no basis in truth in what the spokesman of the enemy army stated,” said Izzat al-Rishq, a senior member of the Hamas political bureau. He accused Israel of making the allegations to “pave the way for a new massacre to be committed against our people.”
Medics from the International Committee of the Red Cross entered Gaza on Friday for the first time since the outbreak of war on October 7, a spokeswoman for the organisation said. Six medical staff passed through Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, alongside four other ICRC specialists and six aid trucks. The organisation’s regional director, Fabrizio Carboni, said the convoy was “a small dose of relief, but it’s not enough.”
Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday that it expected to launch a ground offensive into Gaza soon but admitted that it would be long and difficult, and aim to destroy a vast network of tunnels used by the territory’s militant Hamas rulers.