From: The Times of Israel September 13, 2024
IDF declares Hamas’s Rafah Brigade defeated; no active cross-border tunnels found

Military discloses just 9 tunnels crossed from Gaza to Egypt, all had been blocked up before IDF arrived; over 2,000 terror operatives killed, 13 km of underground passages destroyed

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The Hamas terror group’s Rafah Brigade has been decimated, at least 2,308 of its operatives have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and over 13 kilometers (8 miles) worth of tunnels have been destroyed, military officials told reporters in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city on Thursday.

Now, as the IDF maintains control of the entire city and the border area with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, combat engineers are completing their investigations of a few dozen Hamas tunnels that have not yet been demolished, an operation that will not take longer than a few weeks.

With seemingly no hostage deal with the terror group on the horizon — under which the IDF would likely have to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, including the Philadelphi Corridor — it currently remains unclear what the IDF will do in Rafah once the last tunnel is destroyed.

Senior military officials said they would carry out whatever missions the political echelon eventually orders them to complete.

“The Rafah Brigade has been defeated,” Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, the general in charge of the offensive in the city, told reporters at the Philadelphi Corridor. “Their four battalions have been destroyed, and we have completed operational control over the entire urban area.”