IDF says 26 km of Gaza tunnels disabled since ceasefire took effect

The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that its troops had destroyed an underground tunnel roughly one kilometre in length in the northern Gaza Strip, and that more than 26 kilometres of tunnelling had been rendered unusable since the ceasefire agreement came into force. In a statement published on its official Telegram channel, the military said forces were operating in northern Gaza to secure the area and clear what it described as terrorist infrastructure near the Yellow Line, and released footage it said showed the dismantling of the tunnel.

Times of Israel military correspondent Emanuel Fabian, reporting the same announcement, wrote that the tunnel was demolished in recent weeks during operations by the Northern Brigade of the army's Gaza Division, working alongside combat engineers from the Yahalom unit. The figure of more than 26 kilometres, he reported, covers tunnelling destroyed since the October 2025 ceasefire on the Israeli side of the line in Gaza.

What the Yellow Line is

The Yellow Line is the demarcation to which Israeli forces pulled back inside the Gaza Strip under the ceasefire arrangement. Israeli troops remain deployed on one side of it and continue to operate there; the territory on the other side is outside the area they hold. The line has become the reference point for describing where the army is working, and both the military statement and the reporting on it locate this tunnel demolition in relation to it rather than to any named town or neighbourhood.

The three accounts of the announcement describe the geography in slightly different terms. The IDF's Telegram post places the activity in the area of the Yellow Line. The military's post on X says the tunnels disabled since the ceasefire lie east of the Yellow Line. Fabian's report describes the same tunnels as being on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line. The reports do not otherwise specify the locations of the individual tunnels included in the total.

Who Yahalom are

Yahalom is the IDF's specialist combat engineering unit, whose tasks include the location, mapping and destruction of underground passages, along with explosive ordnance disposal and demolition work. Its Hebrew name means diamond. The unit has been central to Israeli operations against Gaza's tunnel network, and in this case the military credits it, together with the Gaza Division's Northern Brigade, with the demolition work behind the cumulative figure.

The Gaza Division is the regional formation responsible for the area around and inside the Strip, and the Northern Brigade is one of its subordinate units, covering the northern sector. Naming the brigade is the level of detail the military typically provides when it wants to attribute an operational achievement without disclosing exactly where forces are working.

Why tunnels are counted in kilometres

Hamas built an extensive underground network beneath Gaza over years, used for movement, storage, command and the concealment of fighters and hostages. Because the network is continuous rather than made up of discrete structures, the Israeli military reports progress against it by length: metres and kilometres of shaft and passage located and then made unusable, usually by controlled demolition or by filling.

That accounting method means a single tunnel of one kilometre, as announced here, is presented as a component of a running total rather than as a standalone objective. The military's framing is that the work is ongoing, and it did not present the 26 kilometre figure as final.

How this fits the ceasefire

The ceasefire that took effect in October 2025 halted large scale fighting but left Israeli forces holding ground inside Gaza up to the agreed line. Announcements of this kind, describing engineering and clearance work rather than combat, have become the recurring form of Israeli military communication from the Strip since then. The military presents the demolitions as defensive measures for the area it holds.

Both the IDF statement and Fabian's report describe the activity as taking place over recent weeks, without giving a start date for this particular demolition or saying when the footage was filmed.

What the reports do not say

The material does not identify the specific location of the one kilometre tunnel beyond northern Gaza, nor does it say where the passage led, how deep it ran, or when it was built. It does not state how many separate tunnels make up the cumulative total, or over what period each was destroyed.

The reports give no information on whether anything or anyone was found inside the tunnel, and no casualties are mentioned on either side. There is no independent confirmation of the length figures, which come from the military alone, and no comment from Hamas or from any body in Gaza appears in the material. The reports also do not say how much of the network the army believes remains in the area it holds.