Iran raps Israel over attack on Gaza lifeline tunnel

“The blood thirsty Zionist regime mistakenly thinks that by killing Palestinian youths it can break their will,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi on Monday.

He added that seven decades of such atrocities have not been able to curb the will and resolve of the Palestinian people.

Earlier in the day, Israeli war planes bombarded and destroyed a lifeline tunnel in the southern part of the besieged Gaza Strip.

Among the victims were two senior commanders of al-Quds Brigades, which is the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement.

The tunnel, which was still under construction, reportedly belonged to Hamas resistance movement and infiltrated into the heart of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has criticized the incident as an attempt to undermine the reconciliation talks between the Palestinian factions.

The movement also stressed that the Israeli attack constituted a new war against the people of Gaza.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. Since then, the Israeli regime has launched three devastating wars on the coastal strip.

The latest military offensive against the territory in 2014, left nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead, including 577 children, over 11,100 others wounded and thousands of homes destroyed.

The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

The Israeli regime denies about 1.8 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs with proper wages as well as adequate healthcare and education.

KD