Egypt military engineers block 120 tunnels in Sinai

CAIRO: Egyptian military engineers have blocked 120 tunnels used for smuggling to and from the Gaza Strip since the start of operations in the neighboring Sinai Pensinsula, security officials said yesterday.
“Tunnel entrances are being demolished every day and the operation will continue until all underground passageways are shut,” one official told AFP.
No less than 12 tunnels were blocked in the past two days on the Egyptian side, the source said, adding that the most of the tunnels lie in a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) stretch of the border.
Until now, the army has not used explosives or water to plug the tunnels, which are also found in residential areas.
Seven homes sitting on top of tunnel exits were leveled and two massive underground passages used to smuggle cars into the Gaza Strip were sealed, security officials said.
The military sent in tanks and soldiers into the lawless peninsula which neighbors both Gaza and Israel after gunmen killed 16 soldiers in an attack on an army outpost on Aug. 5.
Egypt is also searching for 120 wanted militants and believes around 1,600 extremists, including foreigners, are hiding out in the Sinai, the official MENA news agency reported Wednesday.
Militants wounded three Egyptian policemen in the Sinai last week in an ambush of their vehicle with a rocket propelled grenade, a security official said.
The government has long struggled with militancy and smuggling in the region but unrest has worsened since an uprising overthrew veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak in February last year, prompting the collapse of his discredited police force.
Separately, a Hamas delegation was to head to Cairo for security talks later Saturday amid Egyptian anger at a deadly raid on an army post near the Gaza border earlier this month, officials from the Islamist group said.
“A security team from Gaza will leave for several meetings with Egyptian security,” Hamas interior ministry spokesman Ihab Al-Ghussein said.
He said that the object was “to coordinate completely on all security issues, including border security and events which happened in Sinai and the Rafah border crossing (between Gaza and Egypt).”
Egypt closed the crossing — Gaza’s only gateway to the outside world that bypasses Israel — after the Aug. 5 attack and has since only partially reopened it.
Egyptian officials have charged that some of the 35 gunmen who stormed the army post killing 16 soldiers had crossed from Gaza through the network of smuggling tunnels that run under the Gaza border.
But Gaza’s Hamas rulers have said no Palestinians are suspected of involvement in the attack.
Asked if the Hamas delegation would take part in the Egyptian investigation, Ghussein said they would not be “directly involved” but would coordinate with Egyptian colleagues.