IDF soldiers going into tunnels

IDF footage taken inside a Hamas tunnel

Times of Israel reports:

The IDF releases footage of troops of the Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit operating inside a Hamas tunnel in Gaza City.

The Shaldag soldiers operated inside the tunnel to scan it and obtain intelligence.

The IDF says it has discovered some 1,500 tunnel shafts in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, and is working to demolish them.

It says that the vast majority of the tunnels have been found in civilian sites, including schools, mosques, hospitals, UN buildings and residential homes.

Here's the video the IDF released:

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari expanded on this Tuesday:

We are deepening the fight against Hamas's strongholds. Our forces are fighting above and below ground. Since the beginning of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, IDF forces have discovered approximately 1,500 terrorist tunnel shafts and tunnel routes of Hamas. It's important to explain that this underground infrastructure is one of the main elements in Hamas's terror operations. Dismantling Hamas's underground strongholds in the north, center, and south is a significant step in dismantling Hamas, and it takes time, and our forces are working to carry this out.

Today, we released special footage of special forces from the "Shaldag" Unit of the Air Force fighting inside a Hamas tunnel in the heart of Gaza City. These new breakthrough capabilities allow us to achieve significant accomplishments, including killing terrorists underground. These are networks of terrorist infrastructure, above and below ground, located within hospitals, residential apartments, and schools.

The forces are deepening their operation in the area – destroying weapons, terror tunnels, and killing terrorists. A thorough operation to dismantle Hamas from its capabilities.

In southern Gaza, in the Khan Yunis area, we are intensifying and deepening our operation; we added a whole brigade and additional engineering forces to the operation in the area – engineering forces to improve our engineering operations in the area. We are intensifying forces in the Khan Yunis Hamas’ strongholds to dismantle Hamas and will continue to do so with determination wherever required.

This is significant. Up until now, the IDF had avoided actually going into tunnels to fight - for good reason. They would be at a tremendous disadvantage.

However, to dismantle Hamas which can hide in tunnels indefinitely as long as they can steal food and fuel, something has to be done. The IDF is obviously not going into detail on what these "breakthrough capabilities" are but apparently they came up with effective means to fight Hamas on its own home turf.

Robots? Drones? Dogs? Digging their own tunnels that can bypass Hamas' reinforced doors? Imaging that can penetrate the earth? I don't know what the IDF has up its sleeve, but given that it is trying to kill Hamas while rescuing hostages, let's hope that this works.

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