International News

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, July 10, (APP/AFP/Millat Online) –
A tunnel collapse in the Gaza Strip on Sunday killed a member
of militant group Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, it said, in
the latest in a series of such incidents.
The collapse occurred in the northern Gaza Strip,
the Al-Quds Brigades said in a statement, without
providing further details.
It identified the person killed as Ibrahim Hassan Al-Masri,
28, of Al-Quds’s northern command.
The northern Gaza Strip, run by Islamist movement Hamas,
shares a border with Israel.
Hamas as well as Islamic Jihad and other groups maintain
a tunnel network within the Palestinian enclave, both for
smuggling and military purposes.
Since January, more than a dozen Gazans have been killed
in tunnel collapses.
Israel accuses militants in Gaza of rebuilding tunnels that
could be used to attack it, with three wars having been fought
between them since 2008.
Clashes broke out on the Gaza border in May as Israel revealed
a new tunnel reaching into its territory from the
Palestinian enclave, after another was discovered in mid-April.
The violence in May was the worst flare-up between the army
and Hamas since a devastating 2014 war, with Hamas
attacking forces operating nearby with mortar rounds and
Israel responding with air raids and tank fire, which
resulted in the death of a Gaza woman.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around
a decade and its border with Egypt also remains largely closed.
Egypt has also destroyed Palestinian tunnels used to
smuggle in commercial goods, cash, people and, allegedly, weapons.