The Israeli army and internal security agency said on Saturday they had discovered a tunnel of the Islamist movement Hamas under the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza City.
UNRWA, which Israel accuses of being “totally infiltrated by Hamas”, for its part stressed that it has not occupied its headquarters since October 12, five days after the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil. , which sparked the war in Gaza, and called for an independent investigation.
According to the Israeli army and Shin Beth, military operations in Gaza City in recent weeks led to the discovery of a “tunnel entrance” near a school run by the UN humanitarian agency.
Over the past ten years, Hamas has dug numerous tunnels in the Gaza Strip, where its fighters hide, according to Israel. In October, a study by the Modern War Institute of the American Academy West Point identified 1,300 tunnels there, for more than 500 km of underground corridors.
“The entrance led to an underground terrorist tunnel that was an important Hamas military intelligence asset and passed under the building that serves as UNRWA’s main headquarters in the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli military and the Shin Beth in a statement.
“The electrical infrastructure” of the tunnel – 700 meters long and located 18 meters underground – “was connected” to the agency’s headquarters, “indicating that UNRWA facilities supplied the tunnel with electricity”, according to them .
Documents and a stockpile of weapons in the UN compound “confirmed that the offices had also been used by Hamas terrorists,” they added.
UNRWA responded that its personnel had been forced to leave headquarters on instructions from Israeli forces as bombing intensified in the area.
“We have not used this building since we left it and we are not aware of any activity that may have taken place there,” she added. The building was last inspected in September 2023, she said in a statement.
PHOTO FATIMA SHBAIR, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Palestinians view the damage caused by an Israeli strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 10.
Israel’s accusations “deserve an independent investigation, which is currently not possible given that Gaza is in an active war zone,” the UN agency stressed.
Israel recently accused UNRWA of having 12 employees, out of 13,000 employees in the Gaza Strip, involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. He also assured last week that he would prove “UNRWA’s links with terrorism”.
An internal UN investigation is underway into the employees accused by Israel, from which UNRWA has separated, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed an independent commission to assess the “neutrality” of the agency.
An offensive that could cause “tens of thousands of deaths and injuries”
Hamas warned on Saturday that an Israeli offensive on Rafah could cause “tens of thousands of deaths and injuries” in this town in southern Gaza, the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians that the Israeli prime minister announced want to evacuate.
New Israeli strikes targeted Rafah on Saturday, where more than 1.3 million Palestinians now live, according to the UN, the vast majority of them civilians having fled the war that has been raging for four months between Israel and Hamas.
After ordering the army on Wednesday to prepare an offensive on Rafah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked it on Friday to submit a “combined plan” for the “evacuation” of civilians and “destruction” of the Palestinian Islamist movement in this area. city.
“We warn of a catastrophe and a massacre that could result in tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded,” Hamas said on Saturday.
PHOTO FATIMA SHBAIR, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Palestinians mourn their loved ones killed in the Israeli bombing in Rafah on February 10.
The Hamas Ministry of Health counted 117 deaths in 24 hours across the Gaza Strip.
Fighting is taking place in particular in the grounds of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, the largest in southern Gaza besieged by Israeli tanks, where there are still 300 staff members, 450 wounded and 10,000 displaced, according to the ministry.
Witnesses reported continuous tank fire overnight and Saturday at the compound, as well as fire from sniper soldiers and drones.
On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the city’s other major hospital, al-Amal. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced this assault on Saturday, “in the context of the almost total collapse of the health system in Gaza as a result of” Israeli operations.
A gigantic camp
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza in southern Israel, which left more than 1,160 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count. based on official Israeli data.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas, in power in the Palestinian territory since 2007, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union. The Israeli army launched an offensive which left 28,064 dead in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the Islamist movement’s Ministry of Health.
About 1.7 million people, according to the UN, out of a total of 2.4 million inhabitants, have fled their homes, many of them displaced several times across the devastated territory, besieged by Israel and plunged into a major humanitarian crisis.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Women and children queue for water in Rafah on February 9.
In the northern Gaza City, a six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, who had been missing for almost two weeks amid the fighting, was found dead in a car on Saturday in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. his family announced to AFP.
COURTESY PHOTO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Missing for almost two weeks amid the fighting, Hind Rajab was found dead on Saturday.
The family told AFP that the girl and other relatives were in a car when they came face to face with tanks which apparently opened fire. Hind had initially survived, as evidenced by a telephone call made to his family, while the other passengers had died.
After the city of Gaza, in the north, then Khan Younes, Rafah, backed by the closed border with Egypt, is the last major urban center where Israeli soldiers have not yet penetrated, and the main point of entry for humanitarian aid, still insufficient.
This city transformed into a gigantic encampment shelters hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, threatened in the middle of winter by famine and epidemics, who fled bombings and fighting from the north as they moved towards the South.
“It is impossible to achieve the objective of the war without eliminating Hamas and leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” and this requires that “civilians evacuate the combat zones,” Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday.
“We are between life and death. We live in the moment,” testified Bassel Matar, a man who took refuge in Rafah.
PHOTO BASSAM MASOUD, REUTERS
A firefighter puts out a burning car hit by an Israeli strike on February 10 in Rafah.
“Forcing more than a million Palestinians displaced in Rafah to evacuate again without finding a safe place to go […] would have catastrophic consequences,” warned Nadia Hardman, migrant and refugee rights expert for Human Rights Watch.