Tel Aviv:

During the past month, Israeli combat engineers have destroyed approximately 50 Hamas tunnel routes in the area of the Egypt-Gaza border, the Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday. The announcement came as Israeli and Arab leaders were due to resume ceasefire negotiations in Qatar.

The tunnels were all in the Philadelphi corridor, a buffer zone that runs the length of the 14-km Gaza-Egypt border. It was created in 2006 to prevent weapons smuggling after Israel disengaged from the Strip. Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority the following year.

The military did not specify if any of the tunnels crossed into the Egyptian Sinai. On August 4, soldiers from the IDF’s elite Yahalom combat engineering unit destroyed a three-meter tall smuggling tunnel leading into Egypt that was large enough to drive vehicles through.

Securing the Philadelphi corridor and destroying smuggling tunnels there is a critical goal to prevent Hamas from rearming and to curtail its leaders from escaping into the Sinai with Israeli hostages.

At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 111 remaining hostages, 39 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.

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