The IDF said on Thursday evening that it had uncovered and blown up a terror tunnel which led from Gaza into Israel, but Hamas claimed the tunnel was an old one.
Hamas’s so-called “military wing”, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, held a press conference in which it denied that the tunnel was a new one and said, "This tunnel is not new, but one that Israel had already unveiled in the past and our people worked to rebuild.”
“The enemy should not be happy about its false achievements. We will continue to be the occupation’s nightmare,” added the group.
“The enemy discovered the tunnel about two months ago, during the big storm that hit the area, because it collapsed,” claimed a spokesman for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. “Our activists labored to fix it, although it collapsed again - partly because the weather has not been good the last few days. The IDF discovered the tunnel three days ago, but this is not a new tunnel nor did military action lead to its discovery.”
Back in October, IDF soldiers discovered a tunnel, built by Gaza terrorists, that led from Gaza to an Israeli kibbutz.
The terror tunnel that was exposed began in the Gaza town of Absan al-Zariz, located between the city of Khan Younis and the Gaza security fence. It extended for 2.5 kilometers (over 1.5 miles).
Hamas later admitted that it was behind the tunnel and said that it “was made by the hand of the fighters of al-Qassam and they will not sleep in their efforts to hit the occupation and kidnap soldiers.”
Several weeks after the tunnel was discovered, an IDF squad was working on a controlled explosion to destroy it when terrorists set off an explosive device, wounding five soldiers, one of them seriously.