Israeli soldiers led a media tour of the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, and pointed out that what appeared to be cement factories and other industrial facilities were in fact being used to manufacture rockets and missiles stored in deep tunnels.
Inside a large tunnel with sunlight filtering through gaps in the wall, army spokesman Daniel Hagari held what he said were missile detonators capable of hitting targets 100 kilometers away, a range that covers most of central and southern Israel.
He told reporters who were present, “This factory was built on Salah al-Din Road, which is a main road in Gaza that is also used to transport humanitarian aid to the besieged area.”
The army said in a statement issued later that it was “the largest weapons manufacturing site discovered since the beginning of the war.”
The statement indicated that some of the passages were 30 meters deep, while the tunnels formed a network linking Hamas fighters in various parts of Gaza.
The Bureij camp contained more than 45,000 people before the war between Israel and Hamas began, according to data from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Israel pledged to eliminate Hamas after an unprecedented attack launched by the movement on southern Israel on October 7, which led to the killing of about 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on official Israeli figures.
About 250 people were taken during the attack and held hostage, while about 100 of them were released during a week-long truce concluded in November.
The Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, accompanied by a ground attack starting on October 27, led to the deaths of 23,084 people, the majority of whom were women and children, according to the latest toll from the Hamas Ministry of Health on Monday.
#Underground. #Israel #discovers #unprecedented #Hamas #site
