An extensive labyrinth oftunnels built by the Hamas militant group stretches across the denselypopulated strip, hiding fighters, their rocket arsenal and over 200hostages they now hold after an unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
By Jon Gambrell and Isabel Debre, Associated PressFILE - Israeli soldiers walk through a tunnel discovered near the Israel-Gaza border Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013. An extensive labyrinth of tunnels built by Hamas stretches across the dense neighborhoods of the Gaza Strip, hiding militants, their missile arsenal and the over 200 hostages they now hold after an unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“I usually say it’s like walking down the street waiting to get punched in the face,” said John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army major and the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. The reason is simple: tunnel battles are considered some of the most difficult for armies to fight. A determined enemy in a tunnel or cave system can pick where the fight will start — and often determine how it will end — given the abundant opportunities for ambush.
“They started saying that they destroyed 100 kilometers of Hamas tunnels. I am telling you that the tunnels we have in the Gaza Strip exceed 500 kilometers,” Sinwar said following a bloody 11-day war with Israel. “Even if their narrative is true, they only destroyed 20% of the tunnels.” Ariel Bernstein, a former Israeli soldier who fought in that war, described urban combat in northern Gaza as a mix of “ambushes, traps, hideouts, snipers.”
U.S. forces fighting the Vietnam War struggled to clear the 120-kilometer network known as the Củ Chi tunnels, in which American soldiers faced tight corners, booby traps and sometimes pitch-dark conditions in the outskirts of what was then Saigon, South Vietnam. Even relentless B-52 bombing never destroyed the tunnels. Nor did Russian strikes on the Ukrainian steel mill in 2022.
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