Egyptian army destroys tunnel near Gaza

The Egyptian army announced yesterday that it had destroyed a cement tunnel near its border with the Gaza Strip.

In a statement posted on Facebook, the spokesman of the Egyptian Army Brigadier General Mahmoud Samir said border guards, in cooperation with the army, discovered the tunnel and destroyed it.

Since October 2014, the Egyptian army has been setting up a two kilometre wide buffer zone along the country’s border with Gaza as part of its campaign against terrorism.

In September 2015, the Egyptian army started pumping sea water into the cross-border tunnels and the area along the border in the hopes of collapsing any existing structures. Environment experts warned that this measure would damage the underground aquifers in the area.