Israel Reveals Hamas Intel Tunnel Underneath UNRWA HQ in Gaza

In a joint statement Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Security Agency (ISA, or Shin Bet, or Shabak) said:

Over the last two weeks, IDF and ISA forces have been conducting a division-level targeted raid on terror targets in northern and central Gaza.

The forces operated in the areas of Shati and Tel al-Hawa in northern Gaza. Approximately 120 Hamas terrorists were killed and 20 terrorist infrastructure sites were destroyed as part of the operation. 

Following ISA intelligence, the forces arrived at a tunnel shaft near an UNRWA school. The shaft led to an underground terror tunnel that served as a significant asset of Hamas’ military intelligence and passed under the building that serves as UNRWA’s main headquarters in the Gaza Strip. 

The tunnel was 700 meters long and 18 meters deep and contained several blast doors. A wide variety of intelligence assets were seized during the operation. The newly-found intelligence will allow the forces to operate against additional Hamas targets. The dismantling of the tunnel weakens Hamas’ intelligence capabilities.

The forces located electrical infrastructure inside the tunnel connected to UNRWA’s main headquarters, under which the underground tunnel was located, indicating that UNRWA’s facilities supplied the tunnel with electricity.

Following these findings and based on preliminary ISA intelligence, the forces conducted a targeted raid on UNRWA’s central headquarters, which contains offices for various humanitarian and international organizations. Large quantities of weapons were found inside the rooms of the building, including rifles, ammunition, grenades and explosives. Intelligence and documents discovered in the offices of UNRWA officials confirmed that the offices had in fact also been used by Hamas terrorists.

UNRWA has suffered funding cuts from several donor countries, including the U.S., following revelations that at least a dozen members of its staff participated in the Hamas terror attack of October 7. The agency also perpetuates the idea that Palestinians will one day return to Israel and displace Israelis, and has been shown to have indoctrinated Palestinian children to believe that.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.