Gaza tunnel collapse kills Islamic Jihad operative

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TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY ADEL ZAANOUN Palestinian militants from the Islamic Jihad's armed wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, squat in a tunnel, used for ferrying rockets and mortars back and forth in preparation for the next conflict with Israel, as they take part in military training in the south of the Gaza Strip on March 3, 2015. Israel's ground invasion during the 50-day war with Palestinian militants in the summer of 2014 was aimed at destroying the hundreds of tunnels Gaza's two main Islamist groups had built, both for smuggling supplies and for attacks inside Israel. AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS

A tunnel collapse in the Gaza Strip on Sunday killed a member of militant group Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, it said, in the latest in a series of such incidents.

The collapse occurred in the northern Gaza Strip, the al-Quds Brigades said in a statement, without providing further details.

It identified the person killed as Ibrahim Hassan Al-Masri, 28, of al Quds’s northern command.

The northern Gaza Strip, run by the Islamist movement Hamas, shares a border with Israel.

Hamas, as well as Islamic Jihad and other groups, maintain a tunnel network within the Palestinian enclave, both for smuggling and military purposes.

Since January, more than a dozen Gazans have been killed in tunnel collapses.

Israel accuses militants in Gaza of rebuilding tunnels that could be used to attack it, with three wars having been fought between them since 2008.

Clashes broke out on the Gaza border in May as Israel revealed a new tunnel reaching into its territory from the Palestinian enclave after another was discovered in mid-April.

The violence in May was the worst flare-up between the army and Hamas since a devastating 2014 war, with Hamas attacking forces operating nearby with mortar rounds and Israel responding with air raids and tank fire, which resulted in the death of a Gaza woman.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade and its border with Egypt also remains largely closed.

Egypt has also destroyed Palestinian tunnels used to smuggle in commercial goods, cash, people and, allegedly, weapons.