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Gaza's Smuggling Tunnels: The Underground Route to Riches - or Death
[Telegraph-UK] Colin Freeman - Welcome to Gaza's "Tunnel Town." Deep beneath the watchtowers and fences of Gaza's 10-mile-long border with Egypt, a sprawling warren of hand-dug burrows now supplies everything from food, petrol and designer jeans to guns, drugs and black market cigarettes. Tunnel gangs rake in tens of thousands of dollars a week, making the excavation business one of Gaza's few growth industries. Some estimate there are now up to 500 passageways across to Egypt. Tunnel collapses have led to dozens of fatalities - so many that some local shops honor tunnellers in the same fashion as "martyred" local militants, displaying pictures of them clutching spades. Hamas used to impose strict controls on the tunnels' numbers, but has allowed them to proliferate in recent months. Tunnel entrepreneurs are now enjoying such good business that they now have a vested interest in the status quo. In recent months a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has raised hopes that the economic blockade might be eased, but some in Gaza fear that should that ever look to be happening, local tunnel owners will sabotage it by paying militants to fire rockets into Israel again.