Chaos erupted in Brooklyn as Chabad extremists sought to defend a clandestine tunnel deemed illegal by authorities, discovered under a local synagogue.
Tensions flared as police forcibly closed a tunnel, leading to arrests of 10 protesters linked to an extremist movement.
Last December, the tunnel was discovered under the world headquarters of the Chabad movement, the largest Jewish organization in the world, a famous building in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn. In the wake of the damage, synagogue leaders swiftly brought in construction engineers for a thorough assessment.
In video clips shared online, a hidden space, estimated at 20 feet across and carved from raw concrete, was unearthed under the movement’s women’s area, according to the American New York Post website.
The footage showed through hallways into a dirt-filled room where a roughly two-by-foot barrier was removed from the wall of the building next to the building, and led to a concealed beneath the ground, a narrow dirt tunnel, only three feet high, stretches approximately 50 feet and navigates two turns before emerging at the defunct men’s ritual bath headquarters.
According to the New York Post, members of the Chabad movement breached the sanctity of a 100-year-old synagogue, digging a clandestine tunnel below its foundations.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
