CBNNews.com - GAZA STRIP - Five Palestinian workers died and four others were wounded when Egyptian forces detonated explosives inside two smuggling tunnels Tuesday, causing them to collapse, Palestinian medical workers and eyewitnesses reported.

In a separate incident Sunday, two Palestinians suffocated in a smuggling tunnel, according to local medical sources.

Egypt says it is increasing efforts to thwart arms smuggling from the Sinai into the Gaza Strip, through the maze of underground tunnels along the border.

Following Israel's pullout from the Gush Katif Settlement Bloc in the Gaza Strip in August 2005, then Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also pulled Israeli troops from the Philadelphi Corridor - a narrow strip of land separating the Egyptian Sinai from Gaza.

Since that time, untold numbers of tunnels have been dug under the border to transfer all sorts of contraband, along with weapons, ammunition, and explosives.

Source: The Associated Press, Reuters