Palestinian Authority news agency Ma'an reports that 14 Gazans are "missing," following the flooding of a smuggling tunnel with seawater by Egyptian military forces.
Q: what do you call 14 Hamas tunnel rats drowned in their own tunnels?
A: a good start. |
Gazan rescue teams rescued seven tunnel workers, but were unable to locate 14 others. The incident occurred on Tuesday morning near Rafah, on the Egypt-Gaza border. Initial reports that the Civil Defense had established contact with the 14 turned out to be false.
Ma'an managed to indirectly blame the apparent deaths on Israel, saying that the smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border "have served as a lifeline to the outside world for [Gaza] since Israel imposed a crippling siege on the coastal enclave in 2007."
| Too bad the Gazooks didn't consider in advance what would happen if they abused the Egyptians' trust... |
Ma'an acknowledged that the tunnels enable not only the delivery of food, medicine and other supplies – hundreds of truckloads of which Israel allows in daily – but also weapons. They also serve as an important source of tax revenue for Hamas.
| So in other words Hamas is lying. Again. |
The tunnels also serve as a conduit for anti-Egyptian terrorists to Sinai. As a result, Egypt has flooded hundreds of tunnels in the area, and has cleared out thousands of residents to build a 500-meter-wide buffer zone. Just yesterday, four Egyptian policemen were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated under their armored vehicle in Rafah.
| Time for the new canal from the Med to the Gulf of Aqaba... |
Israel, of course, is particularly sensitive to Hamas tunnels, hundreds of which have been built under the Israel-Gaza border over the years. IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped in June 2006 through one of them – and two soldiers were killed at the same time. Other murderous attacks have also been waged in Israel by terrorists arriving via such tunnels.
Over a year ago, it was discovered that Hamas had planned a mega-terror attack by sending 200 fighters through the tunnels into Israel to simultaneously attack various targets throughout southern Israel, including kidnapping and murdering civilians. |