Hamas is feared to be using fuel intended to help the humanitarian effort in Gaza to power its underground tunnel network.
The Israel Defence Forces have published aerial imagery supposedly showing Hamas storage tanks containing ‘more than 500,000 litres of fuel’.
Military experts are concerned that the terror group has begun exploiting the crisis response to Israeli airstrikes by seizing critical fuel supplies.
The labyrinthine system of tunnels snaking below the Gaza Strip, thought to stretch for hundreds of miles, is thought to be Hamas’s key defence against an Israeli ground invasion. The tactic relies on constant fuel supplies. Yesterday it was reported that the Israelis are poised to deploy a new weapon dubbed the ‘sponge bomb’ to disable these tunnels.
It contains chemicals which rapidly expand and harden, and can be dropped into the tunnels to trap attackers or secure safe routes for commandos.
Hamas is feared to be using fuel intended to help the humanitarian effort in Gaza to power its underground tunnel network. Pictured: Smoke rises and billows in different regions of Gaza as the Israeli army conducts air attacks on October 28
The IDF claim the Shifa Hospital (pictured) – the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip – in fact harbours the HQ of the terrorist organisation
Philip Ingram, a former British Army intelligence officer, said: ‘Hamas need power for their underground terror city where they have their command and control, weapons manufacturing and storage and living facilities.
With such an extensive network, keeping a flow of air and light is essential so that it can operate – all of this needs generators and therefore fuel. Hamas will and are prioritising their own needs over what is needed by hospitals, for water and for the delivery of humanitarian aid.
‘Using the pretence of a lack of fuel as a means of pressurising the international community is a tactic Hamas would use; they will deny it from the people so their suffering can be broadcast.
According to one report the Israelis unleashed ‘bunker buster’ concussion missiles to try and destroy the extensive Hamas tunnel network under Gaza. Pictured: Smoke rises from explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip
How Israeli sponge bombs could be used to trap Hamas terrorists in tunnels underground
‘This is all part of their wider plan to keep pressure on Israel.’ The United Nations has warned that aid efforts within Gaza will have to be paused due to a lack of fuel. Israel has cut off supply routes to get into the densely populated, 25 mile-long sliver of land as part of a strategy to starve Hamas of resources.
Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of FRS, a French security think-tank, said: ‘There is fuel for diesel generators in Gaza. Plenty of fuel. But Hamas needs a lot of it to power its own generators for air circulation in the subterranean city.
‘So Hamas keeps the fuel (and sometimes steals it from the UN), and Gazans don’t get it.’
As their expected ground offensive began last night, it emerged that Israeli troops were said to have used handheld ‘sponge bomb’ devices at the IDF’s ‘mini Gaza’, a mock-up of Hamas’s urban warren constructed at the Urban Warfare Training Centre in the Negev desert.
According to The Telegraph, the bombs feature liquids which react on contact. The material is said to be so hazardous that Israeli troops were blinded in trials.