In response to recent reports that Israel has begun limited flooding of some of Gaza\u2019s tunnels with seawater, a Hamas spokesperson said the militant group built the complex underground network system to withstand possible attempts to pump water into them. \u201cThe tunnels were built by well-trained and educated engineers who considered all possible attacks from the occupation, including pumping water,\u201d CNN quoted spokesperson Osama Hamdan as saying at a news conference in Beirut. \u201c(The tunnels) are an integral part of the resistance, and all consequences and expected attacks have been taken into account,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, a US official told CNN that Israel has informed Washington it has started \u201ccarefully testing out\u201d flooding some of Gaza\u2019s tunnels with seawater \u201con a limited basis\u201d to test the ability to degrade the militant group\u2019s underground network on a larger scale. The official, however, noted that the Israelis were still unsure of whether it would work. \u201cBut they assured the US that they are being careful to only test it in tunnels where they do not believe hostages are being held,\u201d he added. On Tuesday night when asked by reporters about the development, US President Joe Biden said: \u201cWith regard to the flooding of the tunnels, I\u2019m not at liberty \u2013 well, there is assertions being made that they\u2019re quite sure there are no hostages in any of these tunnels, but I don\u2019t know that for a fact. \u201cI do know that, though, every civilian death is an absolute tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Israeli military or government have not commented on the report, reports CNN. Earlier this month, Israel\u2019s army had said that it destroyed at least 500 tunnel shafts in Gaza and located more than 800 around the Hamas-controlled enclave. The military said last week that many of the tunnel shafts \u201cwere located in civilian areas\u201d and inside civilian structures. In 2021, Hamas claimed to have built 500 km worth of tunnels under Gaza, though it is unclear if that figure was accurate or posturing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In response to recent reports that Israel has begun limited flooding of some of Gaza\u2019s tunnels with seawater, a Hamas\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":17142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[5159,5158,1380,3031,5161,1530,2059,1531,1418,536,2645,5160,3030,469],"class_list":["post-17141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-civilian-areas","tag-flooding","tag-gaza","tag-gaza-metro","tag-hamas-spokesperson-osama-hamdan","tag-hostages","tag-human-shields","tag-idf","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-palestine","tag-resistance","tag-seawater","tag-tunnels","tag-us-president-joe-biden"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}