Israel confirms pumping seawater to flood Gaza tunnels

”Before it floods tunnels, the army carries out ‘professional and comprehensive’ preemptive checks, including an analysis of the soil and water system in the area, to ensure groundwater is not contaminated,” Israeli’s public broadcaster reported, quoting an army statement.

”Tunnels have been flooded only in locations suitable for this method, without impairing the use of groundwater,” it added.

It marks the first official Israeli confirmation of what foreign media outlets had previously reported regarding the military’s use of water to flood tunnels in Gaza, according to Haaretz.

At the end of last year, Israel installed a system of pumps in the northern Gaza Strip to flood the tunnels with seawater as a part of an operation called Sea of Atlantis, according to US newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

Israel launched a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, killing at least 26,751 Palestinians and injuring 65,636. Nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

The Israeli military has been “astonished” by the size and quality of the tunnels Hamas has built under the besieged enclave, according to a report.

The tunnel network was originally estimated to include 250 miles (400 km) of underground passages and bunkers. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has since revised these estimates to 350-450 miles (560-725 km) or more.

Two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there were close to 5,700 separate shafts leading into the tunnels under Gaza. None of the numbers could be independently verified, however.

It could take “years” to disable the tunnels, one Israeli official told the New York Times newspaper. They need to be mapped, checked for Israeli captives, and “made irreparable”, he stated, acknowledging that the recent attempts to destroy the tunnels by flooding them with seawater “have failed”.

According to another official, Israel is using a “triangle” model to locate the tunnels, which assumes they will be found under any hospital, school or mosque in Gaza.

The Israeli military has underestimated the “extent and importance” of the tunnels to Hamas, which the daily described as an “intelligence failure”.

One soldier, who spoke with the daily on condition of anonymity, said that he took had taken part in destroying about 50 tunnels in Beit Hanoun, in the northeast of Gaza. All of them were rigged with bombs and other explosives, wired to be activated remotely.