Israeli Police and Border Police uncovered a tunnel roughly 25 meters deep, still under active excavation, during a targeted intelligence operation in the West Bank city of Qalqilya. Officers from the Samaria District crime-fighting unit also found the beginnings of a second tunnel nearby, raising immediate alarm among Israeli communities just a few kilometers away. What made the discovery especially unsettling wasn't just the depth, it was what was inside: an M16 rifle, a sniper rifle, ammunition, magazines, burner phones, a DVR device, and fertilizer that police say can be used to manufacture explosives. Four suspects were arrested at the scene and taken in for questioning as investigators work to determine who built the tunnel and why.

Local officials wasted no time sounding the alarm. Kfar Saba Mayor Rafi Saar called the find serious, warning that it reflects a real and immediate security threat rather than a hypothetical one, while Drom Hasharon Regional Council head Oshrat Gani Gonen said a tunnel this close to the seam line simply cannot be ignored. Qalqilya sits roughly a mile from Kfar Saba, one of the larger cities in Israel's Sharon region, putting the discovery uncomfortably close to civilian population centers. In the days that followed, IDF Yahalom unit fighters located two additional shafts nearby, underscoring that this wasn't an isolated dig but part of a broader, more troubling pattern of underground activity taking root deep inside the West Bank.