Egyptian steel barrier claims its first Palestinian victim in Rafah

PIC

[ 25/12/2009 - 05:41 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Egyptian steel barrier which Egypt is building along its borders with the besieged Gaza Strip had killed a Palestinian man in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah after a tunnel collapsed over him due to the Egyptian excavation, Palestinian security sources revealed.

According to medical sources in the city’s Abu Yousef Al-Najjar hospital, the lifeless body of Palestinian citizen Salah Alwan, in his forties, was pulled out of the tunnel’s rubble.

Owners of tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt borders revealed they couldn’t anymore operate after pieces of the Egyptian steel wall destroyed many of the tunnels in Al-Salam suburb in Rafah city.

According to them, the tunnels were the only way for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to survive after the Israeli occupation sealed off all the crossing points with the Strip, and Egypt closed the vital Rafah crossing point in the south, which is the only gateway for the Strip’s inhabitants to pass to the rest of the globe.

Few weeks ago, the Egyptian government started the construction of the wall along its borders with the Gaza Strip and goes nearly 30m meters below the ground amidst wide condemnation from local and international human rights and legal organization.

For the past 40 months, Egypt rejected and still is rejecting persisting calls from human rights and legal groups to lift the siege on Gaza and to open the Rafah port for humanitarian reasons.

Uprooted Palestinian