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Hamas men killed in Gaza tunnel collapse, PA prevents attack on Israelis
Up to five Hamas operatives have been killed after a tunnel they were digging in the Gaza Strip underneath the Egyptian border collapsed overnight.
Although Hamas has refused to talk about the incident, Palestinian reports say that between two and five people were killed in the incident. Some have put the collapse down to heavy rain, while other reports have said that Egyptian forces intentionally instigated the collapse.
It is the twelfth such tunnel collapse in Gaza in 2016, which has seen at least 16 Hamas members killed, as the terror group looks to rebuild its underground tunnel network. Hamas uses the tunnels for a variety of purposes, from smuggling to launching attacks on Israeli targets.
Egypt has a long-standing policy of destroying the tunnels beneath the Gaza border into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Cairo accuses Hamas of using the tunnels to smuggle weapons and arms into Sinai for the ISIS-affiliated Sinai Province terror group, which has waged a long-standing armed campaign against President al-Sisi’s regime. Meanwhile, the subterranean network was a major feature of Hamas attacks on Israel during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Although Israel subsequently destroyed most of the tunnels, Hamas has admitted to rebuilding its underground capability in preparation for future attacks.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA) arrested three Palestinians over the weekend, who had been missing since last month and were reportedly planning a large-scale attack on Israelis. They were found with a large cache of weapons near Ramallah and were taken for questioning by PA police, who said that they were members of Hamas.
A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, condemned the PA’s actions, saying: “The cooperation between the PA and Israel in arresting the three fighters is a serious escalation in the coordination between them.” Both Israeli and PA leaders have recently underscored the importance of security cooperation between them as a means of reducing the number of Palestinian attacks, which have seen at least 31 Israelis killed since October.