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Egypt is Flooding Gaza Border Tunnels With Seawater, Poisoning Water Supply

© REUTERS / MOHAMMED SALEMA Palestinian worker repairs a smuggling tunnel after it was flooded by Egyptian security forces, beneath the border between Egypt and southern Gaza Strip November 2, 2015.
A Palestinian worker repairs a smuggling tunnel after it was flooded by Egyptian security forces, beneath the border between Egypt and southern Gaza Strip November 2, 2015. - Sputnik International
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Egypt has been pumping salt water from the Mediterranean into Gaza's underground tunnels, which Cairo says have been used to smuggle weapons to Islamist insurgents in the Sinai desert.

At one point, an estimated 22,000 Palestinians worked in around 2,500 tunnels, bringing commercial goods mainly into Gaza. Weapons were smuggled in separate tunnels controlled by Hamas and other militant groups, Reuters reported.

In this July 29, 2014 photo, smoke and fire from an Israeli strike rise over Gaza City. A fierce debate is raging within Israel's military over the extent to which soldiers should be held legally accountable for their actions during last year's Gaza war, with commanders increasingly at odds with military lawyers. - Sputnik International
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But in September, while facing of an insurgency in northern Sinai, Egypt shut down the tunnels. In an effort to halt what it said was an arms flow in the opposite direction – from Gaza to the militants – Cairo started pumping water into the tunnels, collapsing the land.

Tunnel-builders said that since September, Egypt has done more damage to the tunnels than Israeli bombing had caused over the past two decades, Reuters reported. It is now thought that less than 20 tunnels remain, with cigarettes the main contraband taken across the border.

But more than destroying the tunnels, the flooding is contaminating water supplies and threatening to wreck farmland and spread disease, Palestinian officials say.

"One cubic meter of seawater pollutes 40 cubic meters of underground water," said Tamer al-Sleibi, a water department director in Gaza.

He worries that the water could weaken the foundations of homes and spoil the land for agriculture. Additionally, as the water turns stagnant, mosquitoes and other disease carriers will breed.

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