Gaza terrorists torch Israeli vehicle

Three Palestinians set an Israeli construction vehicle ablaze on Wednesday.

By Associated Press and World Israel News

Three Palestinian terrorists sneaked up to an Israeli construction vehicle near the Gaza security fence and set it ablaze on Wednesday, the Israeli military said. No one was hurt in the incident.

The men crossed a barbed wire fence inside the Gaza Strip but did not advance past the main security barrier along the frontier, the IDF said, adding that the three “returned to the Gaza Strip” after starting the fire.

The heavily-guarded frontier has been mostly quiet since the 11-day war last May between Israel and the Hamas militant group that controls the coastal territory.

In December, Israel announced the completion of a 65-kilometer high-tech barrier running both above and below ground on the border with Gaza. The upgrade took three and a half years to complete at a cost NIS 3.5 billion ($1.1 billion).

“There is no place in the world that has built an underground barrier,” Fence Administration Director Brig.-Gen. Eran Ofir said at the opening ceremony Tuesday. “It was a very complex project, both operationally and engineering-wise.”

The upgrade came in the wake of 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, in which Hamas made extensive use of cross-border tunnels with the aim of infiltrating southern Israel. Some 70,000 Israelis currently live in over 50 communities within the Gaza area.