Another success for the IDF in combating Hamas’s network of tunnels in the Gaza Strip. For the 15th time in two years, the IDF located and destroyed an offensive cross-border tunnel, which according to the Israeli Military, was dug by the Islamist Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, with the aim of carrying out attacks in Israel. IDF spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus told TV7 in a press conference-call that the tunnel ran some 200 meters into Israeli territory. The Islamist Hamas organization did not immediately respond to TV7’s request for comment. It is important to note that since the 2014 Gaza war, in which Palestinian militants managed to use a cross-border tunnels-network to successfully blindside Israeli forces on several occasions, the IDF has since developed a series of barriers, which includes both tunnel-detection-technologies and an underground frontier wall, which according to the military, will end the Gaza tunnel threat by 2019.
In the aftermath of the destruction of the tunnel, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote on his Twitter account that “We don’t stop working for a moment, both above and below ground. The terrorist tunnel we destroyed this morning is yet another tunnel that will not be at Hamas’s disposal in the next confrontation. Every day we take another step on the way to destroying the tunnel weapon.”