In 4th collapsed Gaza tunnel since January, Hamas search & rescue teams are trying desperately to recover the 5 members of its military wing who disappeared.
By Daniel Siryoti
Yet another tunnel dug by Hamas in the Gaza Strip has collapsed. Palestinian media outlets reported Sunday that five members of Hamas’ Izzedine al-Qassam military wing had been trapped when a tunnel collapsed on them east of Zeitoun in the Gaza Strip.
Their condition was unknown. Hamas cordoned off the scene and search and rescue teams were looking for the five operatives.
The incident follows several similar collapses recently. On Jan. 28, heavy rain caused a Hamas tunnel close to the Gaza border to collapse, killing seven Hamas operatives. Due to the rainy conditions, it took two days to find the bodies and announce their deaths. Hamas issued a statement saying, “The mujahedeen martyrs were repairing an old tunnel, from which a number of operations were executed in the [2014] war.”
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Three other Hamas operatives were killed in two additional tunnel collapses in early February.
Since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israel has been working to combat the threat of the tunnels from Gaza, which Hamas has been working equally hard to rebuild. In 2015, defense officials said that Israel was working on new methods of detecting tunnels, but for obvious reasons the security establishment is keeping details of any new developments a secret.
For some months now, Egypt has also been active in combating the tunnel threat, flooding the tunnels with sea water to prevent them from serving as smuggling conduits.
View original Israel Hayom publication at:
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=32093