A senior Hamas official said just weeks after the October 7, 2023 attack that the extensive tunnel network beneath Gaza was constructed to protect Hamas fighters rather than to provide shelter for the territory’s civilian population.
Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of Hamas’s political leadership, made the comments in an interview with Russia Today on October 27, 2023, 20 days after Hamas terrorists attacked communities across southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting 251.
Asked why Hamas had reportedly constructed 500km of tunnels but had not built bomb shelters for Gaza's civilians, Abu Marzouk replied that the tunnels had been built to protect members of Hamas from Israeli airstrikes and shifted the responsibility of protecting civilians to the UN.
“We have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed,” Abu Marzouk said. “These tunnels are meant to protect us from the airplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels.”
He continued: “Everybody knows that 75 per cent of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees, and it is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect them. According to the Geneva Conventions, it is the responsibility of the occupation to provide them with all the services, as long as they are under occupation.”
The remarks are an unusually direct description by a senior Hamas figure of the intended military function of the tunnels and the terror group’s lack of concern for Gaza’s civilians.
Twenty days after October 7, a Hamas official sits on Russian television and explains the architecture of the place.
— Mor Edge Insight (@MorEdge_Insight) September 16, 2026
The interviewer asks the only honest question in the clip. “You built five hundred kilometers of tunnels. Why did you not build shelters for the people who live… pic.twitter.com/i6nBvKqglK
The terror group invested enormous resources to build the underground infrastructure in the years preceding October 7.
The underground military network was built beneath densely populated parts of Gaza including hospitals and schools, allowing its fighters to move, store weapons, launch attacks and shelter from Israeli strikes.
According to figures reported by Gaza's Hamas-ran Health Ministry, 73,035 Palestinians were killed in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and June 21, 2026 – a figure which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The Israeli military said in January 2025 that it had killed nearly 20,000 Hamas terrorists during the war, which was the last time an updated figure was provided.
Before the war, estimates generally put Hamas's armed wing at roughly 25,000 to 30,000 fighters, but providing an updated figure today is difficult because Hamas does not publish its personnel losses and it is thought they have been able to recruit during the conflict.
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