re: #209 Dark_Falcon

There were reports yesterday that the Egyptians blew up a smuggling tunnel killing a bunch of Palestinians, who further claimed that the Egyptians used poison gas at the same time.

A Hamas security official in charge of the tunnel area along the border said the Egyptians filled the passage with some type of crowd dispersal gas. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give his name.

The Hamas Interior Ministry later said in a statement the gas used to try to clear the tunnel was poisonous. Besides those killed, six people were injured, it said.

“The Interior Ministry confirms that the citizens’ cause of death was the Egyptian security forces spraying poison gasses into one of the tunnels,” the statement said without elaborating.

A doctor at a hospital in the Gaza border town of Rafah, Hamdan Abu Latifa, said the dead smugglers suffocated.

Or, maybe the smugglers were transporting something that when detonated caused a gas that could suffocate those folks? Naw, Hamas is merely hoping to stoke violence towards Egypt, which continues to keep the border closed with Gaza (and doesn’t take nearly the grief that Israel does for doing the same).