The army has uncovered an unusually large tunnel on the Gaza-Egypt border area, big enough for vehicles to pass through, the Israel Defense Force said Sunday.
According to the military, the tunnel was around three meters (10 feet) tall.
It was located along the so-called Philadelphi Route last week, as part of efforts to uncover all of Hamas’s arms-smuggling routes in the area.
The tunnel was being investigated by combat engineers before it was to be demolished, the military said.
Dozens of tunnels have been found along the Philadelphi corridor, including at least 25 that crossed into Egypt.
The tunnel’s discovery came amid continued fighting in Gaza’s south and center.
A barrage of at least five rockets was fired from the southern Gaza Strip, triggering sirens in a number of towns near Ashdod for the first time in months.
Some of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome and some impacted open areas. The IDF said one of the rockets hit the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council.
The Fire and Rescue Service said it was working to put out a fire sparked by a rocket that hit near the southern town of Bitzaron.
There were no injuries in the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the long-range attack.
Also Sunday, the army announced that a recent drone strike in central Gaza’s Nuseirat had killed Ismail Nofal, who participated in Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and was reportedly the son of Ayman Nofal, the former commander of Hamas’s Central Gaza Brigade, whom Israel killed in October.
According to the army, the younger Nofal was a Hamas terrorist who participated in the devastating October 7 attack and was also involved in rocket fire on Israel amid the war.
Meanwhile, a group of Hamas members operating out of two schools in Gaza City were struck by Israeli fighter jets on Sunday afternoon, the IDF said.
According to the military, Hamas embedded command and control rooms within the Hassan Salama and Nasr schools in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
The schools were used by the Hamas operatives as a hideout and as a command room where attacks on IDF troops and Israel were planned and carried out, the military said.
To mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, the IDF said it carried out “many steps,” including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and other intelligence.
“The Hamas terror organization systematically violates international law, brutally exploiting civilian institutions and the population as a human shield for terror activity,” the military added.
In recent months, dozens of airstrikes have been carried out against Hamas sites embedded within schools and other sites used as shelters for civilians, according to the IDF.
A separate overnight Israeli strike killed at least five people in a tent area inside the Al-Aqsa Hospital compound, in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, the Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry said.
The IDF said it struck a gunman in Deir al-Balah who “conducted terror activities” and that secondary explosions were identified, indicating weapons were present in the area.
Elsewhere in Deir el-Balah, three Palestinians were killed Sunday when an Israeli missile struck a house, while eight other people were killed inside their home in Jabaliya camp in northern Gaza City and three inside a car in separate Israeli strikes, Reuters reported.
More than 50 other strikes were carried out in Gaza over the past day, targeting cells of gunmen, buildings used by terror groups, observation posts, and other infrastructure, according to the military.
The war in Gaza was sparked when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7 to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll, which cannot be independently verified, does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed about 15,000 combatants in battle, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists killed inside Israel during the October 7 attack.