Report: Egypt pumped deadly gas into tunnel between Gaza and Sinai, killing two
Egypt has spent years flooding smuggling tunnels with water and sewage, and sometimes toxic gas.
We have devoted extensive coverage to the terror tunnels built by Hamas and other terror groups under the Gaza-Israel border, as well as the Hezbollah tunnels under the Lebanese border. Those tunnels are uniformly dug to prepare for or carry out terror activities.
There is an additional category of tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border that receive much less attention in the media. Those tunnels are not uniformly terror-related — many of them are smuggling tunnels for civilian goods.
Yet even those civilian tunnels often serve a terror purpose to smuggle weapons and terrorists into and out of Gaza.
Egypt has gone to great lengths to shut down the tunnels, accusing Hamas and other Gaza groups of giving assistance through the tunnels to ISIS-related groups fighting the Egyptian army in the Sinai peninsula.
Egypt has been destroying buildings along the border to clear the border area, and pumping huge volumes of water to try to flood the tunnels. It also reportedly has flooded tunnels with sewage, and toxic gas.
In 2018, Egypt reportedly destroyed 37 cross-border tunnels.
Just a few days ago, Egypt reportedly discovered another tunnel, and pumped toxic gas into it, killing a Palestinian police officer and a civilian. The Jerusalem Post reports:
Two Palestinians died Monday and several others wounded after Egyptian troops pumped toxic fumes into a smuggling tunnel stretching into the Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas-run Gaza Interior Ministry was quoted by Wafa news as identifying the two as 39-year-old Hamas officer Abdul Hamid al-Aker, who was killed during a “security mission to inspect the tunnel,” and 28-year-old Sobhi Abu Qarshin. Abu Qarshin was said to have died during a rescue attempt.
Several other security personnel were rescued by civil defense teams from inside the tunnel and were rushed to hospital, where they were described as being in moderate condition.
The ministry did not say what gas was used by the Egyptians.
Palestinian media showed images:
Yonah Jeremy Bot at The Jerusalem Post points out:
Egypt reportedly gassed Hamas tunnelers on Monday leading to two deaths and several injured as part of ongoing efforts to eliminate Hamas’ cross-border tunnels between it and Gaza.
Although deadly gas has been banned as a method of war even against combatants for a century there were no global outcries against Egypt.
In contrast to Egypt, Israel has declined to use gas or flooding tunnels with sewage water.
Recently, Israel has also favored filling tunnels with cement, which may be among the least lethal methods of neutralizing tunnels. Were Israel to use Egyptian methods, it would presumably face a wave of global criticism as it does nearly any time it uses force.
What principles of international law apply to tunnel warfare, how does Israel try to clear tunnels without violating the law and why the double-standard?
The double standard is even more pronounced because Egypt used these tactics against smuggling tunnels that are not dedicated solely to terror, unlike the tunnels into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon. More aggressive tactics could at least have some justification against military tunnels, but the smuggling tunnels at worst are dual purpose.
Why the double standard? We know the answer.
[Featured Image via IDF: Hamas tunnel into Israel destroyed January 2018]
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Comments
ain’t this a *DAMN* shame?
i mean, they only got two of the scum, not all of them.
personally, i’d suggest they use propane & O2, then add a spark, but that’s just me. 😎
Ah, yes. The ol’ potato gun technique.
Where you see the palos flying out of a building or hole in the ground, is the origin of the tunnel.
Meh. Just another workplace injury incident, though not as spectacular as those involving bomb making.
Use the tunnels for CO2 sequestration.
Clearly the way to eliminate gophers, Paleos, and other burrowing pests is to make it an uninhabitable environment
The MSM would have us think that Israel somehow has the Gaza strip completely “bottled up” so it’s never mentioned that Gaza has a border with Egypt. It’s very similar to the conception that Israel’s war of Independence produced only Arab (a.k.a. “Palestinian”) refugees when in fact, an equal number of Jewish refugees were produced when the surrounding Arab countries expunged their Jewish citizens.
Carbon dioxide would or any non toxic gas flooding the tunnel would also work. Possibly they don’t want survivors or for it to be detected.
What’s the bet that these “security” people were really smugglers or a military action squad on it’s way to cause trouble and the Egyptians detected this and so had a special surprise for them. They knew they were there. And why should they be attacked for stopping an invading force?
Nancy and Chuck can answer that question.
This always reminds me of the joke where one guy is hampered in a fight and when he’s resourceful enough to still fight back, the referee cries out for him to “fight fair, fight fair”.
Which means that the US and Israel have to not only fight hamstrung but must not resort to unique and effective means of defense. God bless Israel and the US and may God do a bit more to stop our enemies. Just askin’
I was scrawny and asthmatic, and a nerd from an early age. Bullying started about 3rd grade, in 6th grade my parents had a meeting with the school principal who told us that I would have to take lumps just like others.
I already had a strong interest in chemistry and science in general. So I made something which would be quite painful, and when the bully confronted me on my way home I told him he better leave me alone. He carried on about that as a show for his little gang, I then strayed him in the eyes, kicked him as hard as I could between the legs, shoved him down and jumped on his chest until I broke at least one rib.
Then we had another meeting with that principal, who wanted to kick me out. At that point my parents reminded her of her previous comments, and told her they would sue. I was not kicked out of school.
I had a lot of built up rage.
Anyway, other kids were bellyaching that I did not fight fair. I told them there was nothing fair about one person being bigger than another, and that the only fair fight was those I won. I went on to tell them that there were plenty of people would could beat up on me, but they could not deal with what I would do to them.
After that, they would flap their mouths, but none of them wanted to risk what I would do to them. That rep stuck with me even after we moved to the suburbs, and the bullies left me alone.
There is nothing really fair about fights or wars, just losers and winners. The same applied to corporate and business intrigue, just the methods became much more sophisticated.
I think I now understand your screen name.
Well done!
I created that screen name when all the propaganda was being shoveled about Trayvon Martin. Trayvon’s parents, well not much of parents, really short changed him. When someone raises a kid to think it is ok to lie, cheat, steal and assault others, the outcome is going to bad regardless of race. Trayvon received lawful justice.
I spent many decades countering high profile propaganda campaigns, and I was suspicious from the beginning of the Trayvon campaign. It did not take long to backtrack and identify the unsavory people behind that campaign.
In any event, I grew up, ending up over 6′. All I wanted was to be left alone to pursue my interests, it was a shame that dullards would not allow that.
I was a bit past thirty before I had a peer group where I was finally comfortable.
While I am not Jewish, I ended up with the windfall or curse of a very high IQ, which also came with some deficiencies in speach,spelling & language. That may well be why I was being picked on, in that I never had much in common with other children.
I suspect that envy of high performance drives much of the dislike for Jews. Now I am a rather opinionated old fart who is completely fed up with political correctness. While it may have salved egos of those who are on the wrong side of the Bell Curve, it has created staggering social problems and inefficiency.
One thing which made an impression on me was that the peer group I mentioned had disproportionately high numbers of Jews. It happened that my strengths with abstract multidimensional spatial reasoning complemented that of Jews who were often weak in those areas. One aspect of that is the ability to look at a circuit and visualize its operation.
I think that filling tunnels with cement is a mistake, in that Palestinian scum could dig beside it and only need a new roof and one wall. Also, cement is expensive, why not collapse the tunnel with bombs buried, then arm them.
My choice would be to leave the tunnel looking intact, but to bury a claymore every 10 yards in the floor of the tunnel. Then let them have at it.
The trouble with that, they would just send a stream of aspiring martyrs to trip one mine after another, and they do have enough dumb shits to clear those mines.
But by the time the martyrs had finished their job the Israeli would have been alerted to the impending invasion.
Toxic gas , eh? You mean like… a tailpipe of a truck? Good on Egypt. I cannot think of a better deterrent to tunneling ‘ except putting snakes and scorpions in there. Oh and some fire ants would be good too. Oh, and … I don’t believe anything the Pali’s say… those guys coulda died from lonely-hearts in that tunnel and it would be used in the media.
Put fan at one end of the tunnel, take chlorine and add acid, or use large torch and feed freon into the flame. Both will get results.
Also, fuel-air bomb the point of origin.
palestinians appear to be closely related to weasels.
The way that the story says “deadly gas” instead of “Poison gas” makes me think that all they did was to pump it full of pure Nitrogen, or pure CO2. (nitrogen is cheaper) in a closed space like a tunnel, that’s every bit as deadly as something more noxious, and since it smells “right” someone wandering in doesn’t suspect anything is wrong until it’s too late.
Mount Cyanide?
It is a shame that those terrorists took cyanide into the tunnel.
An Arab solution to an Arab problem. Egypt bagged a police officer and civilian.. hum. Embarrassing to the Palestinians I would guess, hence no great uproar internationally.
If the IDF were to do this, everyone involved, from the person who gave the original order down to the men who pumped the gas, or who knew about it and didn’t stop it, would be hauled up on charges and sent to prison. Even if the order came directly from the Defense Minister, he would be charged.
But it would never come to that because the unit’s “legal advisor”, who has veto power over everything just like the “political officers” in the Soviet army, would countermand the order and charged the officer who gave it.
Israel’s internal enemy, its judiciary and DOJ civil service, is a bigger threat than its external enemies.
How is Israeli public opinion about bureaucrats forcing the people to accept ongoing lose of people, as opposed to treating this as an all out war?
Israeli voters are just as stupid as any other country’s. A good 25% of them are getting ready to vote for Benny Gantz, about whose positions they know next to nothing. And about half consistently vote for leftist parties that offer the mirage of “peace” at the cost of security and lives.
But it really doesn’t matter what the voters think about it, because no matter whom they elect the legal establishment and bureaucracy will do what they want; their wishes override those of the elected government. Governments are required to act on the “advice” of their “legal advisors”, whom they must choose from a short list of three offered by the DOJ civil service. That makes these “advisors” the real government. And the courts recognize no limits on their jurisdiction, and no requirement for standing to bring suit against the government.
Our society, here and there, may be reaching a point where the appearance of democracy is all we’re fit for anymore. Of course at some point we’ll get to the place that the Romans did, where it was no longer important to pretend that elections matter.
Just like here in the U.S.!!
AFAIK it’s only banned if used against personnel. If they knew there were people inside (and there were a war) it would be a war crime, but if they didn’t know that for a fact and their intent was merely to render the tunnel unusable, then AFAIK it would be permitted.
Also “even in war” is a false comparison. There are things that are banned in war but permitted in other contexts. Hollow-point bullets, for instance, have been illegal in war since 1868, but perfectly fine everywhere else.
Why would you pump poison gas into a tunnel if you knew no one was in the tunnel? The whole point of poison gas is to kill people.
If you respond, “well, it’s to deter anyone from going in the tunnel in the future”, recall that many poison gasses are not persistent and can be neutralized given time.
So of COURSE the Egyptians were using poison gas to kill. There is no other reason.
Some people deserve to be killed. Anyone who would have children with the goal of those children to be martyrs deserves to be put out of their misery.
Actually a non-dissipating gas which is heavier than air would simply settle in the low point(s) of the tunnel and act as a barrier to use. The chemical powders used for teargas can be insinuated into the tunnel waiting for movement of people in the tunnel to stir up the chemicals and effectively “gas” the people moving about (some tunnel denial operations in RVN used this as tear gas is not prohibited in war). And for all types of gas, if large fans were used to remove the gas, it would be obvious that someone was trying to use the tunnel.
Try again.
I wrote elsewhere in this thread that I think all they did was to pump it full of Nitrogen. Easy to do, cheap, and just as deadly for anyone trying to pass through the tunnel.
I also thought it was comical to say that the “Police man” who was killed was just “inspecting the tunnel” or some nonsense. Yep, the way rats inspect the cheese stuck on a trap.
Doesn’t the Anti-Gas convention apply to combatants (uniformed soldiers) and non-combatants (civilians)? Spies & Terrorists (combatants out of uniform) get what they get.
Otherwise, we couldn’t execute by gas chamber?
Asking because I don’t know.
The gas chamber isn’t war, so the laws of war don’t apply.
Awesome!!!
water?? gas?? sewage??
little/no deterant, and the tunnels still exist.
turn the tables on the terrorists and plant a few I.E.D’s
and let them worry if their next step will be their last, and who will dig them out of a now collapsed tunnel. best thing is nobody can prove what happened or who planted what. most will be written off as “work related accidents”
water?? gas?? sewage??
little/no deterant, and the tunnels still exist.
turn the tables on the terrorists and plant a few I.E.D’s
and let them worry if their next step will be their last, and who will dig them out of a now collapsed tunnel. best thing is nobody can prove what happened or who planted what. most will be written off as “work related accidents”
I figure that Israel is behind most of the work related accidents, that terrorists would rather we think that they were stupid than admit that Israel took them out. That is of course proof that they are really stupid.
I like the way you apply logic.
some of them, probably. But for others, high explosives really are a stupid thing to fool around with in your garage, even for people who think they know what they’re doing.
Maybe America should start fuel-air bombing Middle East degenerates? A gift to the Israeli people and the rest of humanity.
So, what’s the problem? Step it up.
Jeeezuz. The toxic gasses will kill the Nile Crocodiles that according to Barack Obama we should be filling our moats with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAOEInEzpec
Well, OK, he said alligators. But I consider that an Americanism. Easy mistake. Still, Islam demands that you hate the lizards. Lile you must hate the dogs and pigs.
Like = lile