Deep under the sands of southern Gaza, Israeli troops say they have found and wiped out a Hamas tunnel that stretched about 1.5 kilometers, roughly nine-tenths of a mile, and crept across the so-called Yellow Line into the Israeli-held part of the Strip. According to the IDF, combat engineers from the Gaza Division, working side by side with the elite Yahalom unit, located the passage, blew it up, and sealed it in a recent operation. Inside the underground route, the military says its forces found several rooms intended for use by Hamas operatives, a detail that suggests the tunnel was built for more than simple movement. The military shared footage of the operation, which shows smoke rising after the blast.

The Yellow Line is the boundary marking where Israeli forces are deployed under the U.S.-brokered ceasefire, and Israel has said its troops will stay in place until Hamas is disarmed and immediate threats are removed. The IDF says its engineers are working to clear terror infrastructure both above and below ground along that line, using methods such as systematic drilling to find hidden routes. Israeli defense officials believe Hamas will keep treating tunnels as a key operational tool, which is why the search and destroy missions show no sign of slowing. This is also not the first discovery, as the IDF has announced a string of similar finds across Gaza in recent months. The big question hanging over the ceasefire is how many more of these hidden passages are still waiting beneath the ground.