Israel considers flooding Hamas tunnels as it pursues top leader thought to be hiding underground

Flooding the tunnels is possible, according to Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. “That area of Gaza is all soft sandstone, so in one respect it’s easier to dig tunnels but it also makes them prone to flooding,” he told the British broadcaster Sky News. (Sky News is owned by Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.) “The Egyptians did this in 2015 in the south,” he added, referring to the flooding of several Gaza tunnel networks in 2013 and 2015, which made them unusable for use by smuggling operations. “They could certainly do it, the question is whether there are hostages in the tunnels.”