ISRAELI forces last night claimed to have destroyed 500 tunnel entrances to entomb Hamas terrorists.
Commanders are closing in on October 7 tyrant Yahyar Sinwar.
ReutersIsraeli soldiers watch as their gunboat fires at a target in Gaza[/caption]
GettySurvivors walk among the rubble of a building hit in yesterday’s strikes[/caption]
AFPSmoke billows over Gaza after an Israeli bombardment[/caption]
Ground troops were reported to have entered the south Gaza city of Khan Younis for the first time.
An aerial and sea blitz which resumed when a seven-day ceasefire collapsed on Friday has hit more than 400 targets in the enclave.
Israel Defence Forces spokesman Lt-Col Peter Lerner told The Sun: “We have, since the beginning of the war, identified 800 tunnel access points and destroyed around 500.
“We have designed many different technologies in the last ten years.
“While Hamas think that subterranean warfare can be an advantage it can easily become a death trap.
“We are effectively entombing them — or at least some of their capabilities. The IDF are using an array of devices to wipe out parts of the so-called Gaza Metro tunnel system.
Firstly drones detect the hidden structures before planes take out the deeper defences with bombs which burrow before exploding.
Armoured bulldozers have been clearing areas above the tunnels while attack dogs, unmanned vehicles and robots are used to explore underground.
New “sponge bombs” are high-tech chemical devices which create an explosion of foam which solidifies into an airtight barrier to seal off entrances — leaving Hamas troops to starve or suffocate.
IDF have found booby traps in tunnels, houses and on transport routes.
Itamar Yaar, former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, said: “There’s no need to go into any tunnel if we don’t have a real reason do it.
“The best solution is try to collapse these tunnels — to disconnect different underground sites.”
Sources said operations were being carried out with the “utmost care” to ensure hostages were not entombed alongside captors.
Lt-Col Lerner added: “Hamas have had 16 years to prepare for this so from our perspective, we are not in a rush. We are moving slowly in a way that does not put our forces at risk.”
He said IDF operations had indicated that the terror group and its commanders may have an even bigger network of tunnels than the 250-miles estimated.
Several shallow tunnel sites have been found to contain rocket silos enabling Hamas to continue its missile launches into Israel.
Lt-Col Lerner said: “Others are very deep and are rigged up to electricity and water and have solarpowered air-con units.”
Sinwar, 61, tops Israel’s most wanted list since the October 7 horror in which 1,200 Israelis died and more than 240 taken hostage.
Lt-Col Lerner warned: “Sinwar is the person who financed it, he is the person who gave the green light.
“In doing so he signed his own death warrant.
“We will utilise every possible means at our disposal to get him. We will kill him.”
IDF also revealed that Hamas battalion commander Wissam Farhat was killed in an air strike on Saturday.
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