Russia sends migrants to Europe through secret tunnels originating in Belarus, possibly built by Hamas or Hezbollah, the Telegraph reported on Wednesday.
Lt. Col. Katarzyna Zdanowicz of the Polish Border Force told the Telegraph that officers had uncovered "a total of four tunnels under the border with Belarus,” used for smuggling migrants into the country.
According to military experts questioned by the Telegraph, the only Middle Eastern groups with the capabilities of building such tunnels are Hamas, Hezbollah, certain Kurdish factions, or potentially Islamic State.
“One of the things we immediately saw after the 2006 Lebanon war was parades of cement mixers queuing up in southern Lebanon... we were seeing loads and loads of Iranian tunnel construction,” Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, an American military historian, told the Telegraph.
“We also have ample evidence of Hamas doing the same thing in Gaza. So if you want that deep tunnelling expertise, then the answer to your question is going to be with Middle Easterners.”
British fortifications expert and former sapper Major Rob Campbell also raised the possibility of Iranian proxy involvement, naming Hamas as a potential participant.
“If I had to speculate, experts from the Middle East would be Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” he told the Telegraph.
'No definitive proof' of Hamas involvement
However, former Israeli intelligence official Sarit Zehavi said there was no definitive proof linking the tunnels to Hamas.
“Does Hezbollah or any Iranian proxies have this capability? Yes. Are they the only ones? No. Probably others also have the knowledge, from Kurdish militias in Syria to ISIS,” she said to the British newspaper.
In 2021, Belarusian dictator and Putin loyalist President Alexander Lukashenko threatened to destabilize the European Union with “drugs and migrants”. In the years since, Belarus has brought thousands of Middle Eastern migrants to the country, often under false pretenses, providing instructions on how to enter the EU.
Experts warn that Belarus’s strategy seeks to undermine Europe’s stability as well as support for Ukraine, and many consider the humanitarian crisis unfolding on Belarus’s borders to be largely engineered.
Previously, Polish authorities uncovered a large tunnel near Narewka, 1.5 meters high and roughly 60 meters long. Most of the 180 migrants using the Narewka tunnel came from Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were arrested upon emerging in Poland.
“Physical and electronic security measures at the border, such as thermal imaging cameras and detection systems, allow us to immediately respond to any attempted violations of the state border, even underground ones,” Zdanowicz said.