Another Hamas cross-border tunnel ignored by the BBC

The BBC has refrained from reporting on 50% of the Gaza cross-border tunnels discovered in the past five months.

On March 18th the IDF announced that it had “thwarted an attempt by Hamas to renew an old terror tunnel directed towards the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel”. In addition – as reported by the Times of Israel – a separate tunnel that did not cross the border was also destroyed.

credit: IDF

“The Israeli military on Sunday announced that it destroyed two attack tunnels, one that entered Israeli territory and another inside the central Gaza Strip, the latest in a series of underground structures have been demolished by Israel in recent months.

The border-crossing tunnel destroyed early Sunday morning was located in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said. […]

According to Conricus, the cross-border passage destroyed Sunday was an “old tunnel” that was built before the 2014 Gaza war and partially destroyed during the conflict. He said the Hamas terrorist group was trying to “revive” the passage by connecting an intact portion that penetrated Israeli territory to a new tunnel.

The other target, which was destroyed by Israeli fighter jets around midnight on Saturday, was a “subterranean complex” in the central Gaza Strip, according to Conricus.”

The BBC did not cover the story of the discovery and destruction of this latest cross-border tunnel near the Kerem Shalom crossing. Readers may recall that in January the BBC likewise ignored a story concerning another tunnel near the same location.

On October 30th 2017 a tunnel belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad was destroyed and while the BBC did report that story, its portrayal of the structure’s purpose was ambiguous. On December 10th 2017 the IDF destroyed a tunnel belonging to Hamas. The BBC did not produce any dedicated reporting on that story and the only mention of it came in half a sentence in an article on a different topic.

In other words, the BBC has ignored two of the four cross-border tunnels (one belonging to the PIJ and three to Hamas) that have been destroyed during the past five months, barely mentioned a third and reported problematically on a fourth.

Related Articles:

No BBC reporting on latest Hamas cross-border tunnel

Palestinian Islamic Jihad clarifies what the BBC did not

BBC News conceals part of a story on Hamas tunnels

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