‘There Was A Lift’: How Israelis Knew They Were In Terror Leader’s Lair

An Israeli military commander who discovered Yahya Sinwar’s hiding place has described the elaborate means by which the Hamas leader hid the entrance to his tunnel network.

Lieutenant Colonel Elichan told Israeli media his troops had been searching houses in a suburb of Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, to the hope of finding a Hamas control centre.

“We kept advancing, scanning houses,” he said. “We knew that there were houses with terror ­infrastructure and terrorists,” he said, adding that the “luxury” houses his men searched were stocked with ammunition, ­weapons and Hamas uniforms.

“There isn’t a house you would go into that didn’t have grenades or ammunition, or Hamas uniforms, or something about Hamas,” he said.

The Israel Defence Forces last month found the tunnel network where Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hid in the wake of the ­October 7 massacre. Video released by the IDF showed a series of rooms including two bathrooms, a well-equipped kitchen, and a sleeping area with uniforms spread out on a bed. It also showed a room which the IDF said was Sinwar’s private quarters, and which held a safe in which they said they found millions of shekels and dollars.

The IDF also released video of the terror leader, captured on Hamas’ own surveillance ­cameras, fleeing through tunnels on October 10, three days after militants slaughtered 1200 people in southern Israel.

The search for the network was, said Colonel Elichan, just “another day at the office”, ­although “one tunnel was different than the others”.

He said troops realised they had found the tunnel used by senior Hamas commanders because of its elaborate structure.

“The tunnel was in the basement, covered in ceramics. When we pushed on it, a trap door opened, and there was an elevator that came out of the ground and went down 20m to tunnels below,” he said.

He said that when the division commander came to view the tunnel, he insisted on sitting in Sinwar’s room, rather than using a neighbouring apartment, to ­observe the ongoing search.

“He said, ‘This is where Sinwar and (Hamas co-leader Mohammed) Deif sat and planned the massacre,’ and that there is where he wanted to sit. It was a statement of values – ‘I want to sit here even though it is in bad condition because this is where they sat’.”

Sinwar 60, became Hamas’ political leader in Gaza in 2017 and works closely with the terrorist group’s military wing.

Known as the “butcher of Khan Younis” for his ruthless pursuit of Palestinian collaborators, in the days after October 7 he warned Israel the massacre was “just a rehearsal”.

“The leaders of the occupation ([srael) should know October 7 was just a rehearsal,” he said.

The tunnel in which he was hiding is part of a major network of passages raided by the IDF that ran under a cemetery in the Bani Suheila area of Khan Younis, the Times of Israel reports.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said the tunnels contained “bedrooms of senior Hamas officials and the office of the commander of the Khan Younis Brigade’s Eastern Battalion, from where he directed the attack on October 7”. He said the network also connected to tunnels where hostages were held.

IDF special forces destroyed the tunnel and its entrances after searching them. However, Israel and US officials say Sinwar is living in a labyrinthine network of tunnels under Khan Younis, the southern city where he was born, surrounded by some of the ­remaining 130 hostages.