DPA/Gaza City

Egyptian troops have stepped up their crackdown on the smuggling tunnels linking Egypt to the Gaza Strip, Hamas sources said yesterday.
Over the past three days, the Egyptian army had destroyed 30 tunnels, mainly in the neighbourhood of Al Barazil, in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, the sources added.
Residents said they saw columns of smoke and heard huge explosions. They also saw buildings being destroyed by bulldozers on the Egyptian side of the border.
Sobhi Radwan, the mayor of Rafah, said the crackdown “is increasing our concerns that the Egyptian army is intending to establish a security no-go zone along the borders between the Gaza Strip and Egypt”.
Radwan said that “more than 90% of the tunnels are inoperative due to the campaign.”
The escalation is part of a large-scale military operation by the Egyptian military against militants in the Sinai Peninsula, which began after Islamist president Mohamed Mursi was ousted on July 3.
The ongoing developments in the border area between the Gaza Strip and Egypt had prompted Hamas, which rules the salient, to call on Egypt not to establish any security no-go zone, according to Hamas government spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein.
Meanwhile, the Gaza-based Popular Committee against the Israeli Siege called on Israel to reopen the Karni crossing point at the border between the eastern Gaza Strip and Israel and allow raw materials used for construction, industry and agriculture.
“If Egypt destroys all the tunnels, there must be an alternative to cover Gaza Strip needs,” the committee said.
Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas took control of the Strip in 2007.