The Hamas terror group’s Rafah Brigade has been decimated, at least 2,308 of its operatives have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and over 13 kilometers worth of tunnels have been destroyed, military officials tell reporters in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city, Report informs referring to The Times of Israel.
“The Rafah Brigade has been defeated,” Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, the general in charge of the offensive in the city, tells reporters from the Philadelphi Corridor. “Their four battalions have been destroyed, and we have completed operational control over the entire urban area.”
Cohen, who commands the IDF’s 162nd Division, says that his combat engineering forces located 203 separate, but interconnected, tunnels in the Philadelphi Corridor, stretching from the Egypt border to about 300 meters away on the outskirts of the city of Rafah.
“Most of them we have destroyed,” the general said. “We are operating at the other sites to investigate them, and when we will finish investigating, they will be destroyed.”
Out of the 203 tunnels, Cohen confirms that the IDF had so far located a total of nine that had crossed into Egypt, but every single one had been blocked up previously, either by Egyptian authorities or Hamas themselves.
“There are a total of nine underground sites [tunnels] that cross into Egyptian territory, but they have collapsed, they are not usable, they are not active,” he says.