Hell fires burning

Blasts sweep Gaza district as Israel finds Hamas underground 'terrorists city' HQ

- Tara Fair

IN hellish scenes that seem as if the very ground has caught fire, giant fireballs erupt across Gaza City.

The series of explosions wreaked further destruction in the Er-Rimal district where Israel claims it has found a "subterranean terrorist city".

Sources believe the network of tunnels is where Hamas chiefs plotted the terror group's massacres across southern Israel on October 7, which triggered the conflict.

The Israel Defence Forces said it now had "operational control" of tunnels that once held Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.

Its troops say they found a statement sent to the head of Hamas's Khan Yunis brigade showing that $ 1 million (£785,000) had been spent on blast doors and concrete.

Israel's retaliation for the massacres has wrecked over two-thirds of structures in northern Gaza and a quarter of the southern area of Khan Yunis, according to analysis of satellite data by conflict damage mapping experts Corey Scher of New York's CUNY Graduate Centre University and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University.