Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told Newsmax Wednesday that many of the "terror tunnels" Hamas built beneath Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City are booby-trapped.
"We have different tactical military capabilities that we are using [to clear them]," Shefler said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren." "We have found hundreds — over 300 shafts — similar to what you're showing, of terror tunnels, many of them are booby-trapped, and we're using different tools in order to find the best ways that we can then dismantle them without putting our soldiers at risk and we're continuously looking for more.
"There's hundreds of miles of underground terrorist infrastructure around the Gaza Strip."
Shefler said that the IDF sent a well-trained operational tactical team that includes Arab speakers and medics into an area of the hospital on Wednesday that intelligence indicated was being used by Hamas.
"We found a lot of different arms and weapons and other tools that could be used by Hamas to carry out their terrorist activity," he said. "Now we are continuing to act in that hospital in order to make sure that Hamas cannot carry out any other terrorist activity from that hospital, and we're also taking care, as much as possible, for the patients that have been used as human shields by Hamas terrorists.
"We, for days, have been calling and talking to the administrative and the doctors in the hospital asking them what is needed, calling them to leave in a designated area of the eastern part of that hospital and other routes that we have designated as humanitarian routes to go to the southern area of the Gaza Strip," he continued.
"We have also brought this morning food for babies, incubators and, in the last few days, we have put fuel outside of the hospital so that they can use it."
Asked how they are determining who in the hospital is with Hamas, Shefler said IDF soliders found uniforms "that were left behind" when they went in, so they are thinking that "Hamas put on civilian clothes and ran out.
"That is part of the chances that we are continuously taking and mitigating in how to fight this war," he said. "We know that Hamas uses civilian coverage deliberately in its infrastructure, schools, mosques, hospitals and also, of course, in the civilian coverage and within the humanitarian passages that we have created we know that they move.
"That's this very difficult fight that we're fighting against these terrorists that don't mind using their people as their shields."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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