‘Their four battalions have been destroyed, and we have completed operational control over the entire urban area.’
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
The IDF announced that Hamas’s Rafah brigade has been defeated, 2,308 terrorists have been killed, and 13 kilometers of tunnels have been destroyed.
Israel now has control of the Philadelphi corridor and is in the process of destroying the remaining tunnels, which should not take more than a few weeks.
It is uncertain what Israel will do in Rafah and the Philadelphi corridor since hostage and ceasefire proposals, which are currently stalled, have called for a retreat of the IDF from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military officials say they would carry out any missions the political echelon feels is necessary.
Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, who is in charge of operations in Rafah, said, “The Rafah Brigade has been defeated.”
He added, “Their four battalions have been destroyed, and we have completed operational control over the entire urban area.”
Cohen said his combat engineering forces discovered 203 separate but connected tunnels in the Philadelphi corridor.
Of this number, nine extended to Egypt from Gaza, but all of these were blocked up either by Egypt or by Hamas.
“There are nine underground sites [tunnels] that cross into Egyptian territory, but they have collapsed, they are not usable, they are not active,” he said.
It is known that some of Hamas’s extensive tunnel network have extended into Egyptian territory.
Egypt has tried to obstruct and destroy these tunnels by flooding them, pumping toxic gas into them, and destroying homes and buildings in the area to create a buffer zone.
According to Israeli investigations, as Egypt worked to destroy Hamas’s tunnel system, weapons were not smuggled through the tunnel system; instead, smuggling took place at the Rafah Border Crossing with Egypt.
Also, a certain amount of Hamas’s weapons, including rockets, RPGs, and explosive devices, were locally made.
The tunnel system in Rafah is larger than in other areas of Gaza, with IDF officials calling it the “umm al-anfaq,” the mother of tunnels in Arabic.