The Egyptian army has begun to pump water from the Mediterranean Sea into underground smuggling tunnels connecting Sinai with the besieged Gaza Strip, security officials and witnesses say.
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Gaza, administered by the Hamas movement, remains under a tight military blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.
The Egyptian military has begun flooding tunnels used by Palestinian militants and smugglers under the border with Gaza, reports say. The IDF said it destroyed 32 tunnels.
Hundreds of security men were killed in the attacks, as militants claimed revenge for their fellows who have been killed in a harsh crackdown by the government on Morsi’s supporters.
Scores of Egyptian soldiers and civilians have been killed in an insurgency which has intensified, especially in the Sinai, since the overthrow of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
According towards the account, the inundating use allows Egypt to really damage the tunnels without the need to know their own street address.
The mechanism will result in inundating the tunnels with water without having to find their exact location, an anonymous Palestinian source told Anadolu Agency.
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In November Egypt said it would deepen its buffer zone with Gaza after finding local tunnels, expanding the zone from 500 meters to 1 kilometer.
