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Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Gaza tunnels that are nowhere near Egypt

From IMEMC:
Palestinian medical sources reported that twelve residents were wounded, on Thursday before noon, after a siege-busting tunnel collapsed, east of the Sheikh Zayed area, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

I'm not sure if it is the same one, but the tunnel collapse that killed 2 Hamas members earlier today was also in northern Gaza.

Which means that these were not tunnels to smuggle weapons from Egypt.

So what are they?

Hamas builds tunnels outside of Rafah for one of three reasons.

One is that they are used to travel between buildings in a town without going outside and being seen by the IDF.

Another is that they build underground bunkers with weapons, which makes their claim of the Hamas members being killed by "poisonous gas" most interesting.

And the third reason is that they build tunnels under the border to Israel in order to kidnap Israelis and hold them hostage.

Either way, they are legitimate military targets, and they aren't "siege busting" tunnels as the ridiculous IMEMC says.

(h/t YM and Elliott.)