TEL AVIV – Following the IDF’s discovery of a Hamas attack tunnel, a private Israeli firm hired by Gaza-border communities may have found a second one in Israeli territory.
According to Channel 2, the company detected a hollow pit beneath the ground that it claims may have been dug by Hamas in order to carry out terror attacks in Israel.
The unnamed firm has been investigating areas where people have complained of hearing digging noises underground.
The IDF announced Monday that it had “neutralized” a tunnel discovered a week ago and said that Hamas dug it “in order to carry out attacks against civilians.”
The tunnel was the first discovered in Israeli territory since 2014’s Operation Protective Edge.
After the war, Hamas vowed to continue using tunnels and rockets to attack the Jewish state. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told Gaza residents last week at a rally, “Our message to the prisoners is a message inked in blood. The rifle and the tunnel are our commitment.”
Israel has invested an estimated NIS 1 billion (approximately $250 million) toward developing a detection system to locate such tunnels.
IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said on Monday evening that “the IDF puts the tunnel challenge at the top of its priorities and continues investing time and resources to remove the threat.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s tunnel detection system was unique and called it a “world breakthrough.”
However, IDF officials stressed that even though the detection system was used to discover the tunnel last week, “boots on the ground” and extensive intelligence gathering supplemented the technology.
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