The Israeli army discovered a complex of tunnels and workshops in the center of the Gaza Strip on Monday, presented to journalists as “the largest Hamas weapons production site” discovered “since the beginning of the war”, according to AFP and Agerpres.

Israeli army spokesman Gen. Daniel Hagari said at the scene that the buildings in Bureij shown to journalists brought by the army were intended to house a plant for the production of cement or other industrial goods. They were actually used to manufacture weapons, including missiles, which were stored in underground bunkers equipped with special elevators, he added.

The site is located along Salaheddin Road, the main north-south artery in the Gaza Strip, “through which humanitarian aid is transported from Rafah,” on the Egyptian border, “toward Gaza City,” General Hagari said. According to him, this choice is not accidental, because the Palestinian Islamist movement is convinced that Israel will not strike on this axis.

The officer showed reporters what he described as detonators used to launch rockets capable of hitting targets 100 kilometers away, twice the distance between northern Gaza and Tel Aviv. According to him, the weapons were made from materials and products, such as fertilizers, originally intended for civilian use (agriculture, construction, hospitals).

Around the industrial site, bulldozers work in a desolate landscape between heavily damaged buildings, an AFP photographer noted.

Tens of thousands of people lived in Bureij before the war, but the area where the group of journalists found themselves, about ten kilometers south of Gaza City, now looks like a deserted place.

On January 6, the Israeli army announced that it had “completed the dismantling of the Hamas military structure in the north of the Gaza Strip” and was now focusing “on (…) the center and south” of the territory.