After heavy rain and flooding exposed a terror tunnel in northern Gaza, IDF Golani Brigade soldiers discovered the site several hundred meters from the border, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The soldiers, part of the 12th Battalion, discovered the tunnel after rain and flood-induced landslides shifted the ground, revealing it.
The tunnel was located approximately 800 meters from the border, near Kibbutz Kissufim, and is entirely within Israel’s side of the Yellow Line.
Security sources told Walla on Monday that the military is in “a race against time” to locate and destroy tunnels between the Gaza border fence and the Yellow Line.
This is due to the increasing likelihood that diplomatic factors will halt operations.
The military has reinforced engineering units in Gaza and expanded earthworks across the buffer area, the officials said. The effort includes fortifying existing outposts, improving defenses along the Yellow Line and the border fence, demolishing above-ground structures, and, most intensively, locating and demolishing tunnels.
A security source said this week, “The scale of the IDF’s engineering equipment, in line with the number of tunnel-search focal points in the Gaza Strip, indicates the huge intelligence gap that preceded the war regarding the entire tunnel world of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
Katz to Vance: Majority of terror tunnels left undestroyed before ceasefire began
In October, Defense Minister Israel Katz told US Vice President JD Vance that over 60% of Hamas’s terror tunnels were left untouched before Phase I of the ceasefire began.
Katz said that “demolishing the tunnels is the most important joint mission in demilitarizing Gaza in accordance with the Trump plan.”
The military destroyed tunnels over four kilometers long and killed dozens of terrorists in the Yellow Line area in the northern Gaza Strip in recent months, the military said on Thursday.
This included operations in Jabalya, Beit Hanun, and Beit Lahiya.
Amir Bohbot, Tzvi Jasper, Jerusalem Post Staff, and TPS contributed to this report.