Egypt to flood border with Gaza Strip to destroy tunnels
Egypt plans to deluge the area along the border with the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip with water in an attempt to destroy the underground tunnels between the country and the Palestinian territory.
“The Egyptian army has begun to build huge pipelines along the border with the Gaza Strip,” a Palestinian security source said on Wednesday, the Turkish news agency, Anadolu, reported.
He explained that the Egyptian plan “aims to destroy underground tunnels by filling the area with water.”
Egyptian authorities have made no comments on the project, yet.
The border tunnels are used by the Palestinian people in Gaza to bring in supplies to the besieged strip.
In mid-June, the Egyptian military said Cairo had demolished nearly 1,430 underground tunnels between the country and the blockaded area over the previous 18 months.
The Egyptian army claims that the tunnels are “used by terrorists and criminals” to smuggle weapons to militants in the Sinai Peninsula.
The World Food Program (WFP), however, said in a report in February 2014 that the tunnels have represented “the main supply and commercial trade route for goods into Gaza” since 2007.
Dozens of people, mostly Palestinians, have lost their lives during the destruction of tunnels, which has intensified since the 2013 ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi.
The coastal strip has been under the Israeli air, sea and land blockade since 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
'An outrage'
In an interview with Press TV, James Henry Fetzer, an American scholar and analyst, described Egypt's flooding of the Gaza tunnels as "outrageous," adding that the move proves the extent of the influence of the Israeli regime on Egypt's military government.
"The decision by Egypt to build water pipelines in order to flood the Palestinian tunnels out of Gaza is completely outrageous and inhumane and illustrates the reach of the Zionist political machine to inflict more and more pain on the Palestinian people," he said.
Fetzer further condemned the connivance of the military government in Egypt with the Israeli regime in Tel Aviv's acts of terror against the Palestinians and the silence of the international community in this regard.
"That Egypt should become complicit in these acts of tyranny and terror is an outrage, which the whole world should condemn."
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