Two militants preparing to fire mortars into Israel were detained Saturday by interior security officials of the Islamic Hamas movement, reported a group to which the militants claim membership. The statement, from the Saraya al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, announced the arrest of their members Saturday, reporting that the two men had been arrested as they engaged an Israel Defense Forces unit along the border of Israel and the eastern Gaza Strip. The group added one of the two men is wanted by Israel and had been previously injured in an Israel Air Force attack on Islamic Jihad militants several months ago. The other is a brother of a suicide bomber who was killed near the Gaza-Israel border in 2004.
Four Palestinians wounded in smuggling tunnel collapse
Four Palestinian workers were wounded on Saturday when a tunnel they were building to smuggle goods across the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip collapsed, Palestinian medics said. The wounded were being treated for suffocation and other injuries at Rafah's Abu Yusef al-Najjar hospital. Two were in stable condition, medics said, adding that rescue crews were still scouring the area, fearing that others might still be trapped.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Interior Ministry said that Egyptian security forces had in recent days redoubled their efforts to find and destroy smuggling tunnels across the border that bisects the town of Rafah, and that they had found and destroyed "a number of tunnels."