Israel has yet to destroy even half of Gaza’s tunnels

Destroying theidfidfidf network of tunnels built over the past 16 years by Hamas, the militant movement that has run Gaza since 2007, is one of Israel’s chief war aims. At the start of the conflict Israel estimated that it stretched to hundreds of kilometres. Today security officials concede that this is probably an underestimate. And while the war has been raging for over three months and Israel has killed over 23,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, the Israel Defence Forces () calculates that it has yet to destroy even half the tunnels.In Shujaiya, a neighbourhood in the east of Gaza city that was, until the war, home to 100,000 people, the has discovered a part of the network of which it was previously unaware. It is believed to belong to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the smaller militant groups funded by Iran. On a recent visit to the area with Israeli forces, saw an brigade find two large shafts by the wall of a school. Cables that used the school’s electricity to provide power to the tunnel could be seen running down below ground.