Egyptian soldier shoots dead Gaza smuggler entering illegally via Hamas terror-tunnel

The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports a 2nd Palestinian man escaped near Rafah.

Egyptian Authorities announced early this year it destroyed 1,370 of Hamas’ smuggling tunnels from Gaza.

 

Egyptian soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man Wednesday who was attempting to enter Egypt through a tunnel that exited near Rafah, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported.

Hamas operatives inside an underground tunnel in Gaza on August 18, 2014.

Hamas operatives inside an underground tunnel in Gaza on August 18, 2014. – Photo: Reuters

Citing Egyptian security sources, Ma’an said a second man escaped.
Egyptian border guards opened fire when they spotted two people exiting the tunnel, according to the report. It said one of the men was shot in the abdomen and died in an Egyptian hospital in El-Arish.

Early this year, Egypt announced it had destroyed 1,370 tunnels linking the Gaza Strip with Sinai.

An estimated 30 percent of goods that reach Palestinians in Gaza came through the Egypt-Gaza tunnels as of early last year. The tunnels have been used to smuggle in rockets as well as other goods.

The break between Egypt and Hamas came last July, when President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government were ousted.

In Israel, one of the major objectives of the fighting with Hamas was to destroy the tunnels between Gaza and Israel, which Hamas used several times during the fighting in an effort to carry out attacks on Israeli soil.

 

View original HAARETZ publication at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.612772