Watch: Israel says it has destroyed a Gaza attack tunnel

Israeli forces on Thursday (October 11) destroyed a cross-border attack tunnel that ran from Gaza into Israel dug by Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Palestinian enclave, the military and defence minister said.

"In the past few hours our forces have neutralized a terrorist attack tunnel belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization, which penetrated Israel from the central Gaza Strip," a military statement said.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel in the past decade.

Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus told reporters on a conference call that the tunnel, the 15th detected and destroyed in the last year, ran 200 metres into Israeli territory.

Palestinian gunmen used tunnels to blindside Israeli forces during the 2014 Gaza war. Israel has since been developing detection technologies and laying down an underground frontier wall which, it says, will end the Gaza tunnel threat by 2019.