Israeli army destroys Gaza tunnel
occupied jerusalem — Israel’s military carried out an air raid overnight against an underground Hamas facility in the Gaza Strip and destroyed a separate tunnel under construction that could be used for attacks, it said on Sunday.
No casualties were reported in either operation. Israel’s military said the operation to destroy the tunnel involved new technology it has been developing to detect them.
Hamas called Israel’s actions an attempt “to scare the people” and head off planned protests along the border beginning later this month.
Israel “bears all the consequences of the escalation”, Hamas spokesman Fawzy Barhoum said.
Regarding the overnight operations, Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus said Hamas had been digging the tunnel to link up with an older one in the south of the Palestinian enclave.
The new tunnel had not reached Israeli territory but was within a few hundred metres of the border fence, near the Kerem Shalom goods crossing and in the area of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, he said. The older tunnel did “partially” reach into Israeli territory, but had been discovered and cut off in 2014.
According to Conricus, the recent Hamas work was an attempt to link up with the part of the older tunnel that “they thought could still be usable”.
Israel had been monitoring the work before the operation, said Conricus. An unspecified material was injected to thwart the work and explosives were not used, he said, declining to elaborate further. — AFP