What lies in wait for Israeli ground troops in Gaza, security sources say, is a Hamas tunnel network hundreds of kilometers long and up to 80 meters deep, described by one freed hostage as "a spider's web" and by one expert as the "Viet Cong times 10".
The Palestinian Islamist group has different kinds of tunnels running beneath the sandy 360-sq-km coastal strip and its borders - including attack, smuggling, storage, and operational burrows, Western and Middle East sources familiar with the matter said.
The United States believes Israel's special forces will face an unprecedented challenge having to battle Hamas militants while trying to avoid killing hostages held below ground, a U.S. official said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that Iraq's nine-month-long battle to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State might prove to have been easier than what awaits the Israelis - likely to be "a lot of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), a lot of booby traps, and just a really grinding activity".
Even though Israel has invested heavily in tunnel detection - including a sensor-equipped underground barrier it called an "iron wall" - Hamas is still thought to have working tunnels to the outside world.
After the last round of hostilities in 2021, Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yehya Al-Sinwar, said: "They started saying they destroyed 100kms of Hamas tunnels. I am telling you, the tunnels we have in the Gaza Strip exceed 500 km. Even if their narrative is true, they only destroyed 20% of the tunnels."
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