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Jerusalem: As an Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip looms in its most devastating war yet with Hamas, one of the greatest threats to both its troops and the 2.3m Palestinians trapped inside the seaside enclave is buried deep underground.

An extensive labyrinth of tunnels built by the Hamas militant group stretches across the densely populated strip, hiding fighters, their rocket arsenal and over 200 hostages they now hold after an unprecedented Oct 7 attack on Israel.

Clearing and collapsing those tunnels will be crucial if Israel seeks to dismantle Hamas. But fighting in densely populated urban areas and moving underground could strip the Israeli military of some of its technological advantages while giving an edge to Hamas both above and below ground.

“I usually say it’s like walking down the street waiting to get punched in the face,” said John Spencer, a retired US Army major and the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Urban defenders, he added, “had time to think about where they are going to be and there’s millions of hidden locations they can be in. They get to choose the time of the engagement—you can’t see them but they can see you.”

Overnight on Saturday, the Israeli military said its warplanes struck 150 underground Hamas targets in northern Gaza, describing them as tunnels, combat spaces and other underground infrastructure. The strikes—what appeared to be Israel's most significant bombardment of tunnels yet—came as it ramped up its ground operations in Gaza.

What the past has shown

Tunnel warfare has been a feature of history, from the Roman siege of the ancient Greek city of Ambracia to Ukrainian fighters holding off Russian forces in 24 kilometers (15 miles) of Soviet-era tunnels beneath Mariupol’s Azovstal Iron and Steel Works for some 80 days in 2022.

The reason is simple: tunnel battles are considered some of the most difficult for armies to fight. A determined enemy in a tunnel or cave system can pick where the fight will start—and often determine how it will end—given the abundant opportunities for ambush.

That’s especially true in the Gaza Strip, home to Hamas’ tunnel system that Israel has named the “Metro.”

When Israel and Egypt imposed a punishing blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, the militant group expanded construction of its tunnel network to smuggle in weapons and other contraband from Egypt. While Egypt later shut down most of those cross-border tunnels, Hamas is now believed to have a massive underground network stretching throughout Gaza, allowing it to transport weapons, supplies and fighters out of the sight of Israeli drones.

Yehiyeh Sinwar, Hamas’ political leader, claimed in 2021 that the militant group had 500 kilometers (310 miles) of tunnels. The Gaza Strip itself is only some 360 square kilometers (140 square miles), roughly twice the size of Washington, DC.

“They started saying that they destroyed 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Hamas tunnels. I am telling you that the tunnels we have in the Gaza Strip exceed 500 kilometers,” Sinwar said following a bloody 11-day war with Israel. “Even if their narrative is true, they only destroyed 20 percent of the tunnels.”

The Israeli military has known of the threat since at least 2001, when Hamas used a tunnel to detonate explosives under an Israeli border post. Since 2004, the Israeli military’s Samur, or “Weasels," detachment has focused on locating and destroying tunnels, sometimes with remote-controlled robots. Those going inside carry oxygen, masks and other gear.

Israel has bombed from the air and used explosives on the ground to destroy tunnels in the past. But fully dislodging Hamas will require clearing those tunnels, where militants can pop up behind advancing Israeli troops.

During a 2014 war, Hamas militants killed at least 11 Israeli soldiers after infiltrating into Israel through tunnels. In another incident, an Israeli officer, Lt Hadar Goldin, was dragged into a tunnel inside Gaza and killed. Hamas has been holding Goldin’s remains since then.

Ariel Bernstein, a former Israeli soldier who fought in that war, described urban combat in northern Gaza as a mix of “ambushes, traps, hideouts, snipers.”

He recalled the tunnels as having a disorienting, surreal effect, creating blind spots as Hamas fighters popped up out of nowhere to attack.

“It was like I was fighting ghosts,” he said. “You don't see them.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Friday said he expected a difficult ground offensive, warning it “will take a long time” to dismantle Hamas’ vast network of tunnels. As part of the strategy, Israel has blocked all fuel shipments into Gaza since the war erupted. Gallant said that Hamas would confiscate fuel for generators that pump air into the tunnel network. “For air, they need oil. For oil, they need us,” he said.

The Israeli military also said Friday it had carried out “very meaningful” airstrikes on underground targets.

Typically, modern militaries have relied on punishing airstrikes to collapse tunnels. Israeli strikes in Gaza so far in this war have killed over 7,300 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. But those strikes can inflict only limited damage on the subterranean network.

US forces fighting the Vietnam War struggled to clear the 120-kilometer (75-mile) network known as the Củ Chi tunnels, in which American soldiers faced tight corners, booby traps and sometimes pitch-dark conditions in the outskirts of what was then Saigon, South Vietnam. Even relentless B-52 bombing never destroyed the tunnels. Nor did Russian strikes on the Ukrainian steel mill in 2022.

Underlining how tough tunnels can be to destroy, America used a massive explosive against an Islamic State group tunnel system in Afghanistan in 2017 called “the mother of all bombs,” the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the US military.

An additional layer of complexity

Yet in all those cases, advancing militaries did not face the challenge that Israel does now with Hamas’ tunnel system. The militant group holds some 200 hostages that it captured in the Oct 7 assault, which also killed more than 1,400 people.

Hamas' release on Monday of 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz confirmed suspicions that the militants had put hostages in the tunnels. Lifshitz described Hamas militants spiriting her into a tunnel system that she said “looked like a spider web.”

Clearing the tunnels with hostages trapped inside likely will be a “slow, methodical process,” with the Israelis relying on robots and other intelligence to map tunnels and their potential traps, according to the Soufan Center, a New York security think tank.

“Given the methodical planning involved in the attack, it seems likely that Hamas will have devoted significant time planning for the next phase, conducting extensive preparation of the battlefield in Gaza,” the Soufan Center wrote in a briefing. “The use of hostages as human shields will add an additional layer of complexity to the fight.”

The potential fighting facing Israeli soldiers also will be claustrophobic and terrifying. Many of the Israeli military's technological advantages will collapse, giving militants the edge, warned Daphné Richemond-Barak, a professor at Israel’s Reichman University who wrote a book on underground warfare.

“When you enter a tunnel, it’s very narrow, and it’s dark and it’s moist, and you very quickly lose a sense of space and time," Richemond-Barak told The Associated Press. “You have this fear of the unknown, who’s coming around the corner? … Is this going to be an ambush? Nobody can come and rescue you. You can barely communicate with the outside world, with your unit.”

The battlefield could force the Israeli military into firefights in which hostages may be accidentally killed. Explosive traps also could detonate, burying alive both soldiers and the hostages, Richemond-Barak said.

Even with those risks, she said the tunnels must be destroyed for Israel to achieve its military objectives.

“There’s a job that needs to get done and it will be done now,” she said.

AP

Jerusalem: Israeli warplanes bombed Hamas tunnels and underground bunkers in the northern Gaza Strip, the military said Saturday, signaling a further escalation in its campaign to crush the territory's ruling militant group after its bloody incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago.

Fighter jets hit dozens of underground targets, the military said. As part of the stepped-up bombardment, Israel also knocked out communications and created a near-blackout of information, largely cutting off the 2.3m people in besieged Gaza from contact with the outside world.

The Israeli military said Friday it was expanding ground operations in the territory, another sign that it was moving closer to an all-out invasion of Gaza. Military officials have said a key target would be Hamas' extensive network of tunnels and underground bunkers, much of it located under Gaza City in the north of the territory.

Explosions from continuous airstrikes lit up the sky over Gaza City for hours after nightfall Friday.

The Palestinian telecom provider, Paltel, said the bombardment caused “complete disruption” of internet, cellular and landline services. The cutoff meant that casualties from strikes and details of ground incursions could not immediately be known. Some satellite phones continued to function.

Already plunged into darkness after most electricity was cut off weeks ago, Palestinians were thrown into isolation, huddling in homes and shelters with food and water supplies running out. Attempts to reach Gaza residents by phone were largely unsuccessful early Saturday.

Relatives outside Gaza panicked after their messaging chats with families inside suddenly went dead and calls stopped going through.

Wafaa Abdul Rahman, director of a feminist organization based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said she hadn't heard for hours from family in central Gaza. “We’ve been seeing these horrible things and massacres when it’s live on TV, so now what will happen when there’s a total blackout?” she said, referring to scenes of families that have been crushed in homes by airstrikes over the past weeks.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said ground forces were “expanding their activity” Friday evening in Gaza and “acting with great force... to achieve the objectives of the war.” Israel says its strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate from among civilians, putting them in danger.

The Hamas media center reported heavy nighttime clashes with Israeli forces at several places, including what it said was an Israeli incursion east of the refugee camp of Bureij in the central Gaza Strip. Asked about the report, the Israeli military reiterated early Saturday that it had been carrying out targeted raids and expanding strikes with the aim of “preparing the ground for future stages of the operation.”

Israel has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops along the border ahead of an expected ground offensive. Since mid-week, the military has reported nightly hours-long raids by ground forces into Gaza, saying troops struck Hamas targets with the aim of preparing the battlefield.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has soared past 7,300, more than 60 percent of them minors and women, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. A blockade on Gaza has meant dwindling supplies, and the UN warned that its aid operation helping hundreds of thousands of people was “crumbling” amid near-depleted fuel.

More than 1,400 people were slain in Israel during Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, according to the Israeli government, and at least 229 hostages were taken into Gaza. Among those killed were at least 310 soldiers, according to the military.

Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel.

The overall number of deaths far exceeds the combined toll of all four previous Israel-Hamas wars, estimated at around 4,000.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday that Israel expects a long and difficult ground offensive into Gaza soon. It “will take a long time” to dismantle Hamas’ vast network of tunnels, he said, adding that he expects a lengthy phase of lower-intensity fighting as Israel destroys “pockets of resistance.”

His comments pointed to a potentially grueling and open-ended new phase of the war after three weeks of relentless bombardment. Israel has said it aims to crush Hamas’ rule in Gaza and its ability to threaten Israel. But how Hamas’ defeat will be measured and an invasion’s endgame remain unclear. Israel says it does not intend to rule the tiny territory but not who it expects to govern—even as Gallant suggested a long-term insurgency could ensue.

In Washington, the Pentagon said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Gallant on Friday and “underscored the importance of protecting civilians during the Israel Defense Forces’ operations and focusing on the urgency of humanitarian aid delivery for civilians in Gaza.” The Pentagon said Austin also brought up “the need for Hamas to release all of the hostages.”

The conflict has threatened to ignite a wider war across the region. Arab nations—including US allies and ones that have reached peace deals or normalized ties with Israel — have raised increasing alarm over a potential ground invasion, likely to bring even higher casualties amid urban fighting.

With no electricity, no communications and no water, many of those trapped in Gaza had little choice but to wait in their homes or seek the relative safety of schools and hospitals as Israel expanded its bombing early Saturday.

Throughout the night, orange fireballs exploded on the horizon above the apartment buildings and refugee camps of Gaza City, briefly illuminating clouds of white smoke hanging in the air from previous strikes. Some bombs hit in tight groups, apparently slamming into the same location.

Lynn Hastings, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the occupied territories, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that without phone lines and internet, hospitals and aid operations would be unable to operate. The Red Crescent said it could not contact medical teams and residents could no longer call ambulances, meaning rescuers would have to chase the sound of explosions to find the wounded. International aid groups said they were only able to reach a few staffers using satellite phones.

The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed alarm, saying the world “is losing a window into the reality” of the conflict. It warned that the information vacuum “can be filled with deadly propaganda, dis- and misinformation.”

The loss of internet and phones deals a further blow to a medical and aid system that relief workers say was already on the verge of collapse under Israel’s weekslong seal. More than 1.4m people have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into U.N. schools and shelters. Aid workers say a trickle of aid Israel has allowed to enter from Egypt the past week is a tiny fraction of what is needed.

Gaza hospitals have been scrounging for fuel to run emergency generators that power incubators and other life-saving equipment.

Gallant said Israel believes that Hamas would confiscate any fuel that enters. He said Hamas uses generators to pump air into its hundreds of kilometers (miles) of tunnels, which originate in civilian areas. He showed reporters aerial footage of what he said was a tunnel shaft built right next to a hospital.

AP

Washington: President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to meet on the sidelines of next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, according to a US official familiar with the planning.

The two sides worked out an agreement in principle to hold a meeting during the summit as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Friday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, according to the official, who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official added that the two sides have still not worked out details on the exact day of the meeting, venue and other logistics.

The White House said in a statement following Friday’s meetings that the two sides were “working toward” a Biden-Xi face-to-face on the sidelines of APEC, a forum of 21 Pacific countries.

Earlier Friday, Biden met with Wang, holding an hour-long talk with the senior Chinese official in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. The meeting, with Blinken and Sullivan present, was the latest in a series of high-level contacts between the two countries as they explore the possibility of stabilizing an increasingly tense relationship at a time of conflict in Ukraine and Israel.

The White House said Biden “emphasized that both the United States and China need to manage competition in the relationship responsibly and maintain open lines of communication,” and he “underscored that the United States and China must work together to address global challenges.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden viewed his meeting with Wang as “a positive development, and a good opportunity to keep the conversation going.”

Biden had been widely expected to talk with Wang, a reciprocal action after Xi met with Blinken in June.

Beijing has yet to confirm if Xi will travel to San Francisco for the annual APEC summit, which runs from Nov 11 to Nov 17.

Wang is in the midst of a three-day visit to Washington, where he’s been meeting with top US officials. He sat down with Blinken on Friday morning for the second time during his trip.

On Thursday, after their initial meeting, the Chinese side said “the two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on China-US relations and issues of common concern in a constructive atmosphere.”

In its readout, the US State Department said the two men addressed “areas of difference” and “areas of cooperation,” while Blinken “reiterated that the United States will continue to stand up for our interests and values and those of our allies and partners.”

Wang said before Thursday’s meeting that China's goal was to “push the relationship as soon as possible back to the track of healthy, stable and sustainable development.”

US officials had said they would press Wang on the importance of China stepping up its role on the world stage if it wants to be considered a responsible major international player. The US has been disappointed with China over its support for Russia in the war against Ukraine and its relative silence on the war between Israel and Hamas.

“China should use whatever ability it has as an influential power to urge calm” in the Middle East, said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “We know China has relationships with a number of countries in the region, and we would urge them to use those relationships, the lines of communication they have, to urge calm and stability.”

US officials believe the Chinese have considerable leverage with Iran, which is a major backer of Hamas.

Wang came to Washington at a time when tensions between the two countries remained high, including over US export controls on advanced technology and China’s more assertive actions in the East and South China seas.

On Thursday, the US military released a video of a Chinese fighter jet flying within 10 feet (three meters) of an American B-52 bomber over the South China Sea, nearly causing an accident. Earlier this month, the Pentagon released footage of some of the more than 180 intercepts of US warplanes by Chinese aircraft that occurred in the last two years, part of a trend US military officials call concerning.

The US also has renewed a warning that it would defend the Philippines in case of an armed attack under a security pact, after Chinese ships blocked and collided with two Philippine vessels off a contested shoal in the South China Sea.

Beijing has released its own video of close encounters in the region, including what it described as footage of the USS Ralph Johnson making a sharp turn and crossing in front of the bow of a Chinese navy ship. The US destroyer also was captured sailing between two Chinese ships.

Senior Col. Wu Qian, the spokesman of the Chinese defense ministry, said the videos showed that “the US is the real provocateur, risk taker and spoiler.”

The Pentagon rejected China's characterization of the USS Ralph Johnson’s movements, saying the video includes only “cropped segments of a 90-minute interaction.” The ship “complied with international law” and “operated in a lawful, safe and resolute manner,” the Pentagon said.

During his visit to Washington, Wang was also expected to discuss Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing considers to be part of Chinese territory. Beijing vows to seize it by force if necessary, but Washington, which has a security pact with Taiwan, opposes the use of force.

The Chinese president last came to the US in 2017, when former President Donald Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Biden, who took office in 2021, has yet to host Xi on US soil. The two men last met in Bali, Indonesia, in Nov 2022, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting of leading rich and developing nations.

The US-China relationship began to sour in 2018 when the Trump administration slapped hefty tariffs on $50bn worth of Chinese goods. It deteriorated further over a range of issues, including rights abuses, the South China Sea, Taiwan, technology and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Biden-Xi meeting would bring much-needed stability to relations between the two countries, said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center.

“The keyword here is ‘stabilization’ of bilateral ties—not really improvement, but stabilization,” Sun said. “The world needs the US and China to take on a rational path and stabilize their relationship, offering the region and the world more certainty.”

AP

The UN General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution Friday calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, the first United Nations response to the war.

The 193-member world body adopted the resolution by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions after rejecting a Canadian amendment backed by the United States. It would have unequivocally condemned the Oct 7 “terrorist attacks” by Hamas and demanded the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas, which is not mentioned in the Arab-drafted resolution.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, called the General Assembly “more courageous, more principled” than the divided UN Security Council, which failed in four attempts during the past two weeks to reach agreement on a resolution. Two were vetoed and two failed to get the minimum nine “yes” votes required for approval.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan called it “a day that will go down in infamy,” saying after the vote: “Israel will not stop the operation until Hamas terror capabilities are destroyed and our hostages are returned. … And the only way to destroy Hamas is root them out of their tunnels and subterranean city of terror.”

Frustrated Arab nations went to the General Assembly, where there are no vetoes—just as Ukraine did after Russia’s Feb 2022 invasion because of Moscow’s Security Council veto power—to press for a UN response. And the United Arab Emirates Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh, the Arab representative on the Security Council, expressed delight at the result.

“120 votes in this kind of geopolitical environment is a very, very high signal of the support for international law, for proportionate use of force, and it is a rejection of the status quo that is currently happening on the ground,” she said.

The 14 countries that voted against the resolution include Israel and its closest ally, the United States, five Pacific island nations and four European countries—Austria, Croatia, Czechia and Hungary, all European Union members. Eight EU members voted in favor.

France’s UN Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere said his country supported the resolution “because nothing could justify the suffering of civilians,” and he urged collective efforts to establish a humanitarian truce.

Mansour said the European votes indicate they can be “very helpful” in pursuing a Security Council resolution “or in maximizing pressure in Israel to stop this war.”

While the surprise Hamas attacks killed some 1,400 Israelis, more than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The escalating death toll and destruction in Gaza heightened international support for “humanitarian truces” to get desperately needed food, water, medicine and fuel to the 2.3m people in Gaza.

Unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding but the UAE’s Nusseibeh told reporters “they carry incredible weight and moral authority.”

She said the 10 elected Security Council members, who serve two-year terms, will take the “moral authority” from the General Assembly and try to break the gridlock on a council resolution.

The votes came part way through a list of 113 speakers at an emergency special session of the General Assembly on Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories.

Jordan’s UN Ambassador Mahmoud Hmoud, speaking on behalf of the UN’s 22-nation Arab group, called for action on the resolution because of the urgency of the escalating situation on the ground.

Before the vote, Hmoud urged defeat of the Canadian amendment, saying “Israel is responsible for the atrocities that are being committed now, and that will be committed in the ground invasion of Gaza.”

Canada’s UN Ambassador Robert Rae countered that the resolution appears to forget that the events of Oct 7 happened. The amendment would condemn Hamas, “which is responsible for one of the worst terrorist attacks in history,” he said.

Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram drew loud applause when he said the Arab-drafted resolution deliberately didn’t condemn or mention Israel or name any other party. “If Canada was really equitable,” Akram said, “it would agree either to name everybody—both sides who are guilty of having committed crimes—or it would not name either as we chose.”

The vote on the Canadian amendment was 88-55 with 23 abstentions, but it failed to get a two-thirds majority of those voting for or against—abstentions didn’t count. In the vote on the entire resolution that followed, Canada abstained.

The assembly’s emergency special session, which began Wednesday, continued Friday morning with US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield echoing Israel’s Erdan in calling the resolution “outrageous” for never mentioning Hamas and saying it is “detrimental” to the vision of a two-state solution.

She called it “a perilous moment for Israelis and Palestinians,” stressing that there is no justification for Hamas “terror,” that Palestinians are being used as human shields and that “the lives of innocent Palestinians must be protected.”

Oman, speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, condemned Israel’s “siege” of Gaza, starvation of its population and collective punishment of Palestinians. But it said the Palestinians won’t be deterred from demanding their “legitimate inalienable rights, chief among them the right to self- determination and the right to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

In addition to calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities,” the resolution adopted Friday demands that all parties immediately comply with their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law requiring protection of civilians and the schools, hospitals and other infrastructure critical for their survival.

The resolution demands that essential supplies be allowed into the Gaza Strip and humanitarian workers have sustained access. And it calls on Israel to rescind its order for Gazans to evacuate the north and move to the south and “firmly rejects any attempts at the forced transfer of the Palestinian civilian population.”

The resolution also stresses the need “to urgently establish a mechanism to ensure the protection of the Palestinian civilian population.”

And it “emphasizes the importance of preventing further destabilization and escalation of violence in the region” and calls on all parties to exercise “maximum restraint” and on all those with influence to press them “to work toward this objective.”

AP