Five Gazans killed in ‘flooded’ tunnel to Egypt

Agence France Presse
In this 2013 photo, a Palestinian man works in a tunnel in Rafah, on the border between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip. Egyptís military has tried to destroy or seal off most of the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, a consequence of the heightened tensions between Cairo and the Hamas government in Gaza. (AP file photo)

GAZA CITY: Five Palestinians have been killed in incidents in tunnels in the Gaza Strip, officials said Sunday, including four found dead after the flooding of a passage linking the enclave to Egypt.
Four men aged 22 to 45 “were found dead after the tunnel they were working in was flooded nine days ago by the Egyptian army,” local authorities in the city of Rafah near Egypt’s border said in a statement.
Egypt had not confirmed the information, though it has destroyed hundreds of tunnels in the area, alleging they are used to transport arms and militants.
Gazans use such tunnels to smuggle goods into the Palestinian enclave, which is run by Hamas and has been under an Israeli blockade for a decade.
The border between Egypt and Gaza has also remained largely closed since the 2013 overthrow of Egypt’s President Muhammad Mursi.
Separately, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said on Sunday that one of its fighters was killed while working in a “resistance” tunnel.
It did not provide further details, including whether the tunnel had collapsed, though the term resistance tunnels is used to refer to those dug for military purposes.
Gazans allege Egypt has carried out work to flood the area along its border to destroy tunnels into its Sinai Peninsula, where Egyptian security forces are also fighting Daesh-linked militants.
In recent months, at least 21 Gazans have died in both militant and smuggling tunnels and a number of tunnels have collapsed.

Fatah vote
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party is to announce results of a vote for its ruling bodies Sunday, an election watched closely for clues of how the 81-year-old sees his succession.
The election for both the party’s central committee and its parliament, known as the revolutionary council, is also expected to sideline Abbas opponents, a key reason for holding the vote, some analysts say.
Beginning on Tuesday, some 1,400 delegates met in Ramallah for Fatah’s first congress since 2009 and voted in the elections.
At the congress’s opening, Abbas was re-elected head of the party.
Following Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004, the aging leader has been in charge of Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.
A number of those seen as opposing Abbas were not invited to the congress, and one of his main rivals, Mohammmed Dahlan, is being replaced on the central committee.
Dahlan is currently in exile in the United Arab Emirates and Abbas reportedly resisted pressure from Arab nations to allow him to return.
Observers saw the reduced number of delegates eligible to vote — down from more than 2,000 in 2009 — as part of a move to exclude Dahlan supporters.
The central committee is to include 18 members, plus four who are nominated, while the parliament will have 80 elected members and around 40 who are appointed.
One result is already known.
Marwan Barghouti, a popular figure jailed for life for murder by Israel over his role in the second Palestinian intifada, has been re-elected to the central committee, his wife Fadwa told AFP.
She said Abbas personally called her to tell her that the 57-year-old “had obtained the largest number of votes, well ahead of his competitors.”
Other key figures running include Jibril Rajoub, a former head of intelligence who now leads the Palestinian Football Association, and Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Arafat’s nephew Nasser Al-Kidwa has also been mentioned as a possible successor to Abbas and is a central committee candidate.