It was uneasy, but a real shock for Ayman Abu Samak's colleagues when they pulled out his body this week into a collapsed smuggling tunnel, that was dug under the borderline zone between southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah and Egypt.

Abu Samak, a 32-year-old resident of the West Bank, was in an Israeli jail for several years. Right after is release. Israel deported him to the Gaza Strip in 2004. Abu Samak was unemployed since he arrived in Gaza.

According to Osama Younis, 29, resident of Rafah, a tunnel worker, and Abu Samak's best friend said that his friend was killed on Tuesday as he was in a tunnel that had suddenly collapsed. Both worked together in Rafah tunnels during the past several months.

Rafah town in southern Gaza Strip, which has a population of 80,000 people, most of them are refugees, is bordering Egypt. The city, which was one day bigger, was split into two towns after Egypt signed Camp David peace treaty in 1978 with Israel.

Part of the big town became under Egypt's control and the other is now under Gaza Strip Hamas rulers. A borderline area was build up in 1980 between the two towns of Rafah.

Right after Islamic Hamas movement seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, and routed President Mahmoud Abbas security forces, Israel imposed a tight blockade on the impoverished enclave and closed down all commercial border-crossing points.

Israel has banned more than 4,000 of different kinds of products, mainly food and raw-materials used in industry and construction, but has partially reopened the crossings for humanitarian aids and limited amounts of fuels following international community pressure on Israel to ease the Gaza populations living.

Along the 8-kilometer borderline between the two towns, the Palestinians dug thousands of underground tunnels to smuggle food products and fuels to survive a tight Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. The rubble and the destruction at the borderline zone show as if an earthquake hit the area.

After thousands of "illegal" tunnels were dug under the borders, the Hamas government, which rules the Gaza Strip established a tunnel administration, to supervise the activity in the tunnels, one of the tunnels' owners who named himself as Abu Hadid told Xinhua.

He added that those who want to dig a tunnel must apply for a license, which costs US$2,500. "Rafah municipality provides the tunnel owner who has a license for connection to the city's electricity and water supplies.

"We have to sign on a guarantee that if any of the workers gets killed in the tunnel, the tunnel's owner should compensate the victim's family with US$30,000," said Abu Hadid.

The residents in Rafah told Xinhua that the cost of building a tunnel about 13 meters deep and 300 meters long is around US$110,000. Digging and construction of the tunnel usually takes three months and involves up to 50 diggers.

The owners' return on their investment depends on the type and price of the goods they are smuggling. Owners charge a 15-percent add-on on merchants or individuals moving goods through their tunnels.

"In the beginning, when tunnels' business was launched two years ago, we thought it is a heroic action aims at breaking the Israeli siege, but now and after my best friend Ayman died, I could certainly say that those tunnels are turning into tunnels of death and not tunnels of life," Younis told Xinhua.

According to the Gaza-based al-Mezan human rights center, ten Palestinians were killed in smuggling tunnels since Sunday, including seven were burned to death, two were suffocated and one died of electric shock. The group said in a press release that over the past two years 112 local tunnels workers were killed.

"The elevating death toll of people working in tunnels is tocsin, and the local authorities which rule the Gaza Strip should immediately find the proper way to save the lives of dozens of young local workers in tunnels," said al-Mezan.

General Yousef al-Zahar, chief of civil defense in Hamas ministry of interior said that the reason of having more incidents and disasters in tunnels "is because the tunnels' owners are not fully cooperating with our civil defense forces to prevent more future incidents."

Abu el-Baraa, a tunnel owner in Rafah town denied al-Zahar's claim and said that the problem is not because of lack of cooperation and coordination, "the problem is the Israeli siege that should be immediately lifted. I'm ready to close my tunnel as soon as Israel ends the siege and reopens all Gaza crossing points."

Ibrahim Abu Mo'ammar, chief of the National Association for Law and Democracy in Rafah town told Xinhua his organization intends to go for an awareness campaign in the town to explain to the disparate young workers that working in tunnels would be too dangerous on their lives.

Asked about the reason behind the increase of incidents in tunnels after ten people were killed this week, Abu Mo'ammar said "there is chaos of digging tunnels, while the underground soil is completely sandy, in addition to the concussion bombs were fired at the borderline zone to destroy the tunnels."

"I believe that the only solution to end such daily disasters is to lift the Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. Also the government of Hamas must imposed tough restrictions on the use of tunnels in order to avoid more disasters in the future," said Abu Mo'ammar.

(Xinhua News Agency July 31, 2009)