Al Bilad newspaper The Israeli army: The tunnels in Rafah are a “big maze” and the battles are arduous – 2024-06-20 11:08:07

The commander of the Nahal Brigade in the Israeli army, Yair Zuckerman, said on Wednesday that there are tunnels in almost all the homes in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, and that the progress of his forces is slow and the battles are arduous.

According to the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post, Zuckerman said that during the past few days alone, his soldiers found 17 tunnels in Rafah, and that these tunnels connect the houses of the neighborhoods and form a large maze, and that the city’s houses are connected to each other through openings in the walls.

The Israeli military commander explained that: “Hamas has planted many cameras in Rafah to manage the battle from above and below the ground.”

He added, “Among the challenges facing his forces is booby-trapping houses and rooms in the city before the Israeli forces enter them, and detonating them remotely,” in a comment on the killing of 4 Israeli soldiers last week in the bombing of a house they thought was devoid of explosives, according to the newspaper.

Zuckerman showed the journalists – who were allowed by Israel to go to Rafah and conduct reports from there – a picture of an open closet door and behind it a hole in the concrete wall leading to the neighboring house.

Zuckerman said: “This is a different kind of battlefield,” stressing that the Israeli forces are fighting inch by inch in Rafah, and that “soldiers are fighting above and below the ground,” adding: “It is slow and arduous, but the achievements are important.”

The army commander said that his forces found caches of weapons and missiles, some of which were long-range, stressing the need to give the Israeli army “sufficient time to complete its mission of disarmament in the region,” as he put it.

The newspaper indicated that Zuckerman did not want to talk about the time it would take for this disarmament mission that he talked about, but the Israeli Channel 12 said on Wednesday that after about 40 days of fighting, the army is still far from achieving the tasks assigned to it in Rafah.