Gaza terror tunnel (file)
Gaza terror tunnel (file)Flash 90

According to Arab reports five diggers were killed on Sunday in a tunnel collapse at the city of Rafiah, located in southern Gaza on the border with the Sinai Peninsula.

The deaths were reported by Palestinian media cited by Walla, and mark the eleventh tunnel cave-in in recent months.

The last collapse, which came in mid-March, saw a Hamas "field commander" die during work on a terror tunnel, two days after the bodies of two Arab workers were found in a tunnel on the southern Gazan border that was flooded by Egypt three days earlier.

With the five deaths on Sunday, it would appear that the death toll from terror and smuggling tunnel collapses since January 26 has risen to 20 according to an unofficial Arutz Sheva count. Most of the dead are terrorists of Hamas' "armed wing," the Al-Qassam Brigades.

For many long months Egypt has been establishing a buffer zone inside Gaza along the Sinai border, which has involved flooding the tunnels and destroying the infrastructure that helped Hamas smuggle weapons and goods.

Hamas has been busily reconstructing its terror tunnel network breaching into Israeli territory, and after the last collapse some media reports speculated that a secret Israeli weapon and not heavy rains was responsible for the cave-ins.

Back in February the IDF warned that Hamas appears to be focusing its efforts on one central tunnel breaching deep into sovereign Israel to facilitate attacks on civilians. Reportedly 1,000 Hamas terrorists are working on the major tunnel.