Three die repairing Gaza-Egypt tunnel

GAZA CITY: Three workers died after inhaling toxic gas in a smuggling tunnel beneath Gaza’s border with Egypt, said Palestinian authorities Saturday.

The Interior Ministry said the three were working to repair the tunnel a day after the Egyptian military blew it up. The bodies were recovered Saturday and sent to a hospital in the town of Rafah.

Egypt has recently resumed cracking down on the few remaining tunnels from Gaza after an increase in smuggling.

Earlier this month, Gaza’s Hamas rulers said the resumption of Egyptian tactics along the border, including flooding the tunnels or blowing them up, were “unjustified.”

Meanwhile, the new leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, made his first public appearance since his election for the inaugu- ration of a mosque on Friday, winning praise from his predecessor.

The Hamas movement which has run the Gaza Strip for the past decade invited the media to attend the opening of the Gaza City mosque without announcing Sinwar’s participation.

Sinwar himself made no statement at the event, but his predecessor Ismail Haniya paid tribute to the former prisoner who spent 25 years “in the jails of the (Israeli) occupation.” “This is a source of pride for Hamas and for its prisoners,” Haniya told the crowd.

“The Zionist media are trying to... make a distinction between the military and political figures (in Hamas), but we tell them we are all fighters and that in the face of the occupation we are all military,” the former premier said.