JERUSALEM, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Israel's military said Sunday that its forces destroyed two cross-border tunnels in the Gaza Strip in an overnight air raid after Hamas allegedly attempted to renew one of them.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organization that runs Gaza, dismissed the announcement, saying one of the tunnels was an "old unused" one in the south of the coastal enclave, which had been sealed.
"The announcement of the tunnel discovery is a new attempt at misdirection, an attempt to create the illusion of power and of fake victories for the Israeli public and the international community," Hamas said.
But an Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement that an attempt by Hamas to renew the tunnel was identified and "thwarted tonight with an engineering action, led by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Southern Command."
The destruction of the tunnels was "part of the operational, intelligence and technological efforts to locate and neutralize terror tunnels," the spokesperson added.
Attempts to renew tunnels have been continuing since Israel's 2014 military campaign in Gaza and started to intensify in the past six months, according to the spokesperson.
The military uncovered and destroyed three cross-border tunnels in the past six months, the statement noted.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the destruction of the tunnels at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting.
He warned that Israel's policy "is to take determined action against any attempt to attack us and to systematically eliminate the infrastructure of terrorist tunnels and thus we will continue."
He urged the international community "to realize that the assistance funds to Gaza are being buried underground."
