JERUSALEM, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that its forces had destroyed a tunnel that reached Israel from the Gaza Strip.
According to Jonathan Conricus, foreign media spokesman for the IDF, it is the 15th tunnel destroyed since October 2017.
"This tunnel indicates that Hamas is attempting to challenge our counter terror tunnel efforts and they are changing the excavation way in order to make it more difficult to detect," Conricus told reporters over a phone briefing.
The tunnel was 1 km long and reached 200 meters within Israel. It had phone and power lines.
"Every day we are one step closer to eliminating the weapon of tunnels," Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said on his Twitter account.
Since the 2014 Gaza War, Israel has been allocating significant resources in an attempt to thwart the tunnel threat.
The Gaza War began with the discovery of a tunnel that Hamas constructed in order to infiltrate into Israel and carry out attacks.
Gaza has been under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since 2007.
Tensions between Hamas and Israel have been running high in recent weeks with increasing violent incidents on the border.
According to media reports, a recent attempt to reach a long-term cease-fire between the two sides has failed.
