Two Palestinians died late Sunday and several others injured after inhaling toxic fumes inside a commercial tunnel along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
Iyad al-Bozom, spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza, said that the police officer Raed al-Aker, 39, died during a security mission to inspect a border tunnel south of the Gaza Strip and rescue the other victim Subhi Abu Qurshin, 28.
Al-Bozom said that the civil defense crews managed to pull the bodies out after hours of work. Two security officers were injured in the incident and transferred to hospital for treatment, he added.
Local sources reported that the Egyptian troops on Sunday evening attacked a commercial tunnel in Rafah, the southern area of the Gaza Strip, with toxic fume bombs.
Egypt has in the past flooded commercial tunnels along the Gaza Strip with seawater or sewage, and has destroyed hundreds of homes on the Egyptian side of Rafah to remove the tunnels used by Gazans to break the Israeli-Egyptian siege.
In February 2017, three Palestinians were killed in a tunnel between Gaza and Sinai in similar circumstances. The men were killed after the Egyptian military pumped toxic gas into a tunnel they were repairing after Egyptian military blew it up.
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