On Thursday, the Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Egypt has targeted the Islamist terrorist organizations working in the Sinai Peninsula by demolishing most of the smuggling tunnels that connected the two parts of the city of Rafah in Gaza and in Egypt.
According to Israel National News, “A senior Egyptian official told the newspaper that before 2011 there were 1,200 active tunnels at the Rafah border, some of which were used to transport people, weapons and ammunition. The number of active tunnels later increased to 2,500 and several of them had several openings on the Egyptian side, often inside homes. The Egyptian official added that most of the tunnels had been destroyed, some at a depth of 2.5 kilometers inside Egyptian territory.”
In 2015, it was reported that the Egyptian military was using bulldozers to dig through the sand to find smuggling tunnels.
Egyptian security forces have created a five-kilometer security zone along the border with Gaza in order to find and destroy new tunnels. An Egyptian official stated that Islamist terrorists used the tunnels to flee to Gaza after attacking the Egyptian army.
In 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) demolished 32 tunnels; 14 crossed into Israel for the purpose of conducting terror attacks.
The Times of Israel reported in July, “More than 200 suspected terrorists and at least 35 soldiers have been killed since Egypt launched operation ‘Sinai 2018’ to rid the peninsula of Islamic extremists in February, according to the military.”