Gaza, August 26: An Israeli attack on a Palestinian tunnel in the Rafah area, in the southern part of the beleaguered Gaza Strip, has killed three brothers and injured at least eight others.
Dr. Muawiya Abu Hassanen, head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reported that Mansour al-Battekhy, 30, and his brothers Wael, 26 and Ibrahim, 34, were all killed when the Israeli army shelled a tunnel on August 25.
Majdi al-Baba, the administrative director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said that the rescue teams were still trying to locate residents believed to be trapped under the rubble.
In order to bring in vital supplies, including food and medicines, the 1.5 million residents of Gaza Strip depend on dangerous tunnels.
So far, 116 Palestinians have been killed and more than 510 injured in tunnels since Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip three years ago after Hamas came to power in a democratic election.
These figures do not include those killed in Israeli bombardments of the tunnels.
Meanwhile, on the same day, the Israeli military kidnapped five Palestinian civilians during a morning incursion targeting a number of communities in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian sources said that troops kidnapped three men from Qabalan village in the northern West Bank, one from Jenin, also in the northern West Bank, in addition to one man from Ramallah, in the central West Bank.
As usual, Israeli army radio announced that the arrested men were taken to military detention camps for questioning and that they are on what the military calls its “Wanted List.”
—–Agencies