clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

Egypt destroys ‘main’ tunnel to Gaza

July 3, 2017 at 11:54 am

Image of a Palestinian man inside a tunnel beneath the Egyptian-Gaza border on 19 February 2013 [Eyad Al Baba/Apaimages]

Egypt destroyed a “main” tunnel linking it with the Gaza Strip, the army announced yesterday.

In a statement, army spokesman, Colonel Tamer Al-Rifai, said: “The law enforcement forces of the second field army were able to detect and destroy a main tunnel.”

The tunnel was “about 10 metres deep into the border strip in northern Sinai”, the statement said.

Read: Israel uses ‘tunnel’ claim as an excuse to attack Hamas and UNRWA

The Egyptian army has previously destroyed 31 tunnels on the border with the besieged Gaza Strip since mid-January.

In mid-September 2015, Egypt began pumping large amounts of seawater along the border to destroy the tunnels in parallel with military operations in North Sinai and the Egyptian city of Rafah.