Hamas fighter dies in Gaza tunnel incident
Terror group confirms death of a member of its armed wing near Rafah; two others died in tunnel collapses five days ago
A Hamas member died in a tunnel incident in the southern Gaza Strip overnight, the Palestinian terror organization, which controls the territory, said on Tuesday.
This was the third such incident in recent days.
A statement from Hamas’s armed wing the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades named the dead man as 24-year-old Hani Faraj Mohammed Shalouf, from the town of Rafah, located in the southern Gaza Strip.
Shalouf “met his maker as a martyr while working on a tunnel belonging to the resistance,” the statement said, referring to Hamas.
The tunnel in which Shalouf died was located in Rafah on the southern border with Egypt, the statement said.
A statement from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Yoav Mordechai said that Shalouf had been electrocuted to death.
The Qassam Brigades published images of the Shalouf on their website.
On September 15, Hamas said its fighters Khalil al-Dimyati, 32, and Yusef Abu Abed, 22, were killed after two “resistance tunnels” collapsed.
It did not give details of the locations or causes of the collapses, but confirmed the two men were members of Hamas’s armed wing.
A security source said one collapse was in Gaza City, while the other was near the city of Khan Yunis.
Hamas has run Gaza for a decade and fought three wars with Israel.
Hamas has built a network of tunnels inside Gaza, as well as some under the Israeli border.
During the last round of conflict in 2014, the terror group carried out several deadly attacks on Israeli soldiers using its cross-border network.
Other tunnels are used for smuggling from Egypt, although many have been destroyed by the Egyptian authorities in recent years.
Several dozen Hamas members have died in tunnel collapses in the past year.
AFP contributed to this report.