Israel claims it might flood Hamas tunnels with seawater
Israel is telling western journalists that it has a plan to force out Hamas fighters from the tunnels using water, according to the WSJ.
Israel has assembled pumps which may be used to flood tunnels used by militant group Hamas under the Gaza strip in a bid to drive out fighters, the business newspaper reported on December 4th, citing US officials.
Levantis can not verify how true, or if indeed there is any truth at all, in this story which may well be fake news spread by the IDF, in line with other stories it has distributed which have turned out to be false.
The WSJ claims that in the middle of November, Israel’s army completed the set-up of at least five pumps about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp that could move thousands of cubic meters of water per hour, flooding the tunnels within weeks.
Although neither the WSJ nor Reuters could verify if there was any solid foundations to the story.
When asked about it, a US official said it made sense for Israel to render the tunnels inoperable and that the country was exploring a range of ways to do that.
The news was followed the next day by IDF sources which claimed that at least 15,000 Palestinians have died since Israel entered Gaza, following the attacks by Hamas of October 7th.
Reports citing various Israeli officials in both AP and AFP say that the IDF believes the overall Gaza death toll claimed by Hamas is fairly accurate, and that more civilians have been killed than Hamas operatives. The comments appeared to emerge from an off-record briefing for foreign journalists conducted by military officials.
An unnamed IDF official cited by AP says that at least 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died since the outbreak of the war on October 7. The army says it estimates more than 5,000 of the Gaza deaths to be Hamas terrorists, although senior spokespersons have admitted that they have yet to confirm the killing of even one Hamas fighter.
