Hundreds of Hamas fighters are stuck in Gaza tunnels

The presence of the militants, who have killed three Israeli troops, is threatening to unravel the cease-fire

- Dov Lieber & Summer Said

Hamas militants and Egyptian workers search for the bodies of Israeli hostages in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday.

(AP)

A detachment of Israeli engineering troops was demolishing tunnels behind the withdrawal line in Gaza last month when Hamas militants sprang from a hidden shaft, fired an antitank missile toward their excavator and killed two soldiers.

A little over a week earlier, Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire. Israel responded to the deadly encounter with a round of airstrikes on Gaza that killed dozens of people.

The early test of the fragile truce pointed to a bigger problem: Hundreds of armed Hamas fighters are trapped in tunnels under the Israelicontrolled side of Gaza, and willing to take shots at Israel.

The situation is the result of Israeli efforts that began in May to flush out militants and destroy Hamas's extensive tunnel system where the group has hidden fighters, hostages and weapons throughout the conflict. The strategy was to cut off sections of the underground web from one another. But Israel's partial withdrawal under the U.S .- brokered ceasefire last month has left militants who remain behind the line trapped underground with no means of escape and dwindling supplies.

The fighters' predicament and the possibility of further clashes posed by it constitute one of the biggest threats to the ceasefire. What to do with the besieged militants has become a sticking point in negotiations, Arab officials say. Hamas wants Israel to provide the fighters with safe passage into Hamas-controlled territory.

Israel wants them to surrender or to kill them.