Gaza recovers three dead bodies from commercial tunnels

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Days of Palestine – Gaza

On Thursday, three Palestinians died as the Egyptian military pumped toxic gas into a commercial tunnel, sources reported.

The General Federation of Palestine Trade Unions mourned the three workers who died inside one of the border tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

They said in a statement, “We were shocked by the incident of spraying poisonous gas inside one of the commercial border tunnels south of Rafah by the Egyptian army, which caused the death of three workers who were working in this tunnel and looking for a living underground.”

The statement stated that the three workers are; Wissam Nazmi Ayyad, Issa Khairy Abu Hassoun, and Muhammad Jihad Ayyad.

They denounced “this crime,” calling on the Egyptian authorities to open an immediate investigation into the incident and punish the attack’s perpetrators.

They pointed out that “this attack comes in light of a major Egyptian role in participating in removing the ruins left by the recent Israeli aggression on Gaza, and providing Egypt with a grant to rebuild what was destroyed by the Israeli occupation.”

In its statement, the “Union” stressed that this “also contradicts Egypt’s historical role towards the Palestinian people.”

It stated that “the difficult economic conditions as a result of the tightening of the siege during the past three months, and the prevention of the entry of most goods and basic needs into the sector, compel workers to search for difficult ways to bring the necessities of life into the Strip.”

Earlier Friday, the Ministry of Interior announced that the bodies of three young men had been recovered from a tunnel on the Egyptian border in Rafah.

The bodies belonged to three workers who went missing Thursday after the Egyptian army pumped poisonous gas into the tunnel in the city of Rafah. The search for them continued until night, then stopped for hours and resumed Friday morning.

The Committee of the National and Islamic Forces expressed its “deep regret” for this incident, saying that “how the victims died is unjustified, especially since it was possible to take the necessary and prior cooperative measures to avoid the occurrence of victims.”

In a statement, They expressed their solidarity with the families of the “victims of livelihood,” and they hope “to raise the pace of coordination between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to ensure that such a tragedy not repeated.”