Army and police forces in the early hours of Friday morning arrested three Palestinians suspected of infiltrating the Sinai from the Gaza Strip.
A security source told DPA on Saturday that the suspects were allegedly “involved in terrorist acts.” They were arrested near Bir al-Abed City, North Sinai, in a car heading toward Cairo. When checked it turned out that they were “wanted as per security instructions.”
Ongoing investigations, the source said, have revealed that “the suspects infiltrated Egypt via the border tunnels and made a deal with a man to drive them to Cairo for a large sum of money.”
The source said that the suspects were going to Cairo to carry out “terrorist acts.”
A thousand underground tunnels are thought to have been dug in recent years along the 13-km border between Egypt and Gaza, securing millions of dollars in profit for Palestinian workers, entrepreneurs and transport agents.
People have been using them to smuggle goods into Gaza after Israel imposed a blockade on the territory after the Palestinian group Hamas took power in 2007.
The tunnels are usually 25 meters deep and more than 600 meters long, according to press reports. They link open areas inside Gaza with farms and houses on the Egyptian side.
Israel has frequently accused Hamas of using the tunnels to smuggle weapons.
