[Telegraph-UK] Tim Butcher - The wall between Gaza and Egypt was blown away in at least eight different places and through the breaches swept a tide of Palestinians. First came the curious teenagers, then came the smugglers. Fertilizer, broken down into half bags for lugging through the many tunnels that arms smugglers normally use for delivery into Gaza, was to be seen as it was manhandled overland. It was white, oily, and crystalline. Gaza militants use it to make explosives. "Hey, hey, hey," shouted a man as I took a photograph of a pile of fertilizer half bags. His aggressive tone jarred with the mood of the crowd as he grabbed my camera lens firmly. For most of the thousands of Palestinians who flooded through the border breaches, it was the Eastern Mediterranean version of the British Booze Cruise to Calais. They made their way to shops in nearby Egyptian communities and bought as much as they could carry of things not available so competitively priced in Gaza.
2008-01-25 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive