By Viola Fahmy  

CAIRO

The Egyptian army has destroyed four cross-border tunnels linking Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to the blockaded Gaza Strip, according to a military spokesman.  

In a statement posted on Facebook on Monday, Army Colonel Tamer al-Rifai said border guards had destroyed the openings of four underground tunnels along the borderline in northern Sinai in the first half of this month.  

He said a total of 187 illegal immigrants of different nationalities have been arrested during the same period.  

Due to a decade-long blockade by Israel, the Gaza Strip’s roughly 2 million inhabitants have come to rely on a sophisticated network of cross-border tunnels to import basic commodities, including food, fuel and medicine.  

Ever since Egypt’s 2013 military coup against the country’s first freely elected president, the Egyptian authorities have cracked down hard on the cross-border tunnel network.  

The crackdown comes amid rising militant attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, which shares border with both the Gaza Strip and Israel.