IThe Israeli army announced that it took control of the entire Gaza Strip adjacent to the Egyptian border. Army spokesman Daniel Hajary said that Hamas uses the area known as the Philadelphia Corridor to smuggle weapons.
In the section, which is about 14 kilometers long, there are about 20 tunnels leading to Egypt. The Wall Street Journal quoted an Israeli military official as saying that some of the tunnels were already known to Israel and Egypt, while others were only discovered now.
The Israeli military also discovered dozens of Hamas rocket launchers along the Philadelphia Corridor. It was not initially possible to independently verify the information.
Several media outlets, citing the army, reported that Israeli forces were stationed in most of the corridors. According to its own statement, the army claims to have destroyed a one-and-a-half kilometer Hamas tunnel network near Rafah. Israel also informed its neighbor Egypt of this. According to Israeli media, there are a total of 82 tunnel openings in the area.
Source: OpenStreetMap; Infographic Felt/Paul Daniel
The state-owned Cairo News TV channel, citing a senior source, reported that reports about tunnels on the Egyptian border were incorrect.
But in the past, Egypt has already flooded tunnels from the Palestinian coastal area, where weapons from the Gaza Strip are said to have reached extremists in North Sinai via underground passages. In January, an Egyptian official said that the country had destroyed 1,500 tunnels over the past decade.
At midday, Zakhi Hanegbi, a security advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced the occupation of three-quarters of the corridor. Hanegbi said: “We must, in cooperation with the Egyptians, ensure that weapons smuggling is prevented.”
The width of the sections of the corridor is about 100 meters, and includes the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Its seizure indicates that Israel has intensified its offensive in southern Gaza, despite calls for restraint among civilians amid recent civilian casualties. .
The corridor is part of a larger demilitarized zone on both sides of the Israeli-Egyptian border. The American government does not consider the Israeli army’s advance a violation of its promise to launch a limited attack on the city of Rafah there.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that the occupation of the corridor is consistent with information regarding a limited ground operation in Rafah that Israel provided to President Joe Biden.
He said, „When they informed us of their plans regarding Rafah, they included moving along this corridor and outside the city itself to put pressure on Hamas in the city.”
