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The world's longest railway tunnel is set to open in just over a week - after some 17 years of construction. Measuring 35.4-miles in length, the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is 7,545 feet below the Gotthard massif, cutting through the Swiss Alps. The tunnel was first conceived in sketch-form in 1947 but construction began 17 years ago. It consists of two single-track tunnels connecting Erstfeld (Uri) with Bodio (Ticino) and passing below Sedrun (Graubünden).

It has been cleared for publication that a veteran Hamas terrorist who was involved in the terror group's tunnel-building efforts has been captured by Israel. Under interrogation the terrorist has revealed a wealth of information about Hamas's network of attack tunnels into Israel, as well as its massive network of tunnels inside Gaza, in preparation for any future war with Israel. The news comes on the same day as IDF forces announced yet another breakthrough in the battle against Hamas's terror tunnels, unearthing the second attack tunnel into Israel in a matter of weeks. Mohammed Atounah, 29, hails from Jabaliyah...

It has been cleared for publication that the IDF recently discovered a terror tunnel from Gaza into southern Israel, marking the first such discovery since 2014's Operation Protective Edge. The tunnel was a particularly large and complex one; its route stretched along the eastern sector of the Gaza Strip all the way to southern Gaza, and crossed onto the Israeli side. At some points it reached as much as 30 meters in depth. Video After being discovered, IDF forces quickly mobilized to secure and neutralize it - though precisely how is under a gag order, as is the tunnel's exact...

Farmers in the Gaza Belt continue to work as usual - a few dozen meters from the border fence - despite ongoing threats from Hamas. While Palestinian media has reported heavy engineering tools along the Gaza side of the border, and both MKs and the media have stated Hamas is rebuilding its terror tunnels, the farmers remain unfazed. "We don't feel pressure," Elad Katzir, irrigation coordinator for Kibbutz Nir Oz, told Walla! News Monday. "We are used to it and working up until the last meter." "Today is my 40th birthday," he continued. "It's been 40 years that I've worked...

A new underground defense system is in the works for the Israeli military, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. According to the report, “The Obstacle” — the system to detect and destroy Hamas tunnels extending from Gaza into Israel— was recently proposed by the IDF to....

In a January 29 Friday sermon delivered on Al-Aqsa TV, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya admitted that Hamas was digging tunnels in preparation for a military conflict with Israel. "East of the city of Gaza, there are heroes underground, digging through rocks and building tunnels," he said and added that west of Gaza, Hamas was testing missiles on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Hamas’s military wing, the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, released a video celebrating their tunnel-digging endeavors (see MEMRI TV clip 5292). Ismail Haniya: "This weapon, the weapon of the tunnels, played a crucial role in bringing about our victory....

Eshkol regional council head Gadi Yarkoni on Monday addressed reports that Hamas is ramping up its terror tunnel construction, and several attack tunnels have already crossed underneath the border. Yarkoni said that the IDF has checked the complaints of residents of the region adjacent to Gaza who said they heard the sounds of digging underneath their homes, and he claimed that the sounds were not from terror tunnels. "I don't say that there aren't tunnels, the IDF needs to say that there aren't tunnels. The IDF needs to check everything. The IDF should come to every resident who hears noises...

Cairo has been pumping water into Gaza's underground network of tunnels to stop the flow of weapons from the coastal envoy to militants in Sinai. GAZA - Mahmoud Bakeer speaks with despair about the night of the flash flood, when he screamed at his wife and five children to flee their home on Gaza's border with Egypt as the water rushed in. They made it to safety during the flooding last week, but a network of Palestinian tunnels running under the frontier town of Rafah is now water-logged, destroyed by Cairo to sever what it says is a weapons smuggling...

Egypt's pumping of salt water from the nearby Mediterranean into the tunnels is not only creating a mess as it rises to the surface. Palestinian officials say it is also contaminating water supplies as well as threatening to wreck farmland and spread disease. Local residents say that at the peak of the tunnel business, after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 and Israel tightened a closure of its crossings into the enclave, nearly 2,500 underground passages snaked under the border with Egypt. The direction of traffic was mainly into Gaza. Commercial goods - and weapons smuggled in separate...

With the risk of falling rocks, blind potholes and even carbon monoxide poisoning, it's easy to see where this treacherous road earned its nickname. Dubbed the Tunnel Of Death, the three-mile route is not for the faint-hearted – or the intrepid, for that matter. It was built to provide a safer journey for drivers travelling between Tajikistan’s major cities who previously had to contend with avalanches. But the £2.6billion project, constructed by Iran, appears to have offered an even more hellish alternative instead.

China's move to construct five tunnels to open up a new section of the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) last month has signalled Beijing’s intent to go forward with ambitious projects despite India’s increasingly vocal concerns and rising security concerns in the restive disputed region. In a major project that will ensure year-round land connectivity linking China and Pakistan through PoK, the China Road and Bridge Corporation has constructed five seven km-long tunnels on the Karakoram Highway. Earlier, this particular section had been cut off on account of a barrier lake formed at Attabad, which had blocked access since...

<p>Flaws in nuts that hold up lights throughout the Big Dig’s tunnels may be the result of workers overtightening the fasteners when they were first installed, a top highway official said Thursday.</p> <p>Highway officials revealed this week that an inspector had discovered a cracked nut on a light fixture in the Ted Williams Tunnel in September. After further inspection of the Williams Tunnel and the Interstate 90 Connector and Interstate 93 tunnels, officials said they believe hundreds of fasteners throughout the Big Dig tunnels are flawed and must be replaced.</p>

The tunnel connecting Britain and France was closed to train traffic for up to 6 hours, as hundreds of ‘migrants’ engaged in a planned assault to use it to enter the UK. The Daily Express reports: Eurotunnel services between Folkestone and Calais have been suspended until at least 10am in both directions – with passengers facing delays of up to six hours. Officials believe the "large and co-ordinated" group planned the intrusion before attempting to reach Britain at around 12.30am on Saturday. A Eurotunnel sokesman said: "It's a massive invasion and intrusion by a very large and co-ordinated group of...

It may have escaped the attention of Baltimoreans but things have gotten a little testy in the New York-New Jersey area in recent weeks over the state of century-old rail tunnels running under the Hudson River. The deteriorating condition of the tunnels is threatening Amtrak and other rail service, but how to pay for a $14 billion-plus replacement has proven a challenge. Unfortunately, that's not just a problem for New York City but for Baltimore and other stops along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, the nation's most heavily traveled railway handling more than 750,000 passengers a day. The stations in Baltimore and...

There's much more to California's drought than lack of rain. California is currently in the grip of one of the worst droughts in state history. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed an executive order that imposes water restrictions on residents, businesses, and farms across the state. While the state is clearly experiencing this drought, the extreme weather shortages are an ongoing and man-made human tragedy—one that has been brought on by overzealous liberal environmentalists who continue to devalue the lives and livelihoods of California residents in pursuit of their own agenda. It comes down to this: which do we think is...

Up to 200 smuggling tunnels shut since Egyptian President Morsi took office; some 30% of all goods reach Gaza through tunnels. Egyptian forces have flooded smuggling tunnels under the border with the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said. The network of tunnels is a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a blockade imposed by Israel for more than seven years. Reuters reporters saw one tunnel being used to bring in cement and gravel suddenly fill with water on...

Yediot Ahronot: Egypt proposes water barrier and kilometer wide sterile zone in Philadelphi Corridor Dr. Aaron Lerner 23 February 2007 Yediot Ahronot correspondent Alex Fishman reported in the 21 February edition that Egypt proposed to Israel to dig a deep trench on the Philadelphi Corridor to be flooded with water from the Mediterranean in order to prevent smuggling from Sinai into the Gaza Strip. According to Fishman, the Egyptians raised the proposal during meetings with IDF officials and U.S. General Dayton along with a proposal to create a sterile cleared kilometer wide band on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi...

JERUSALEM, June 17 (Reuters) - Israel set in motion a plan on Thursday to dig a moat along the Gaza-Egypt border, inviting contractor bids for the project meant to prevent arms reaching Palestinian militants through tunnels. The Defence Ministry published the bid notice 11 days after the cabinet approved in principle a Gaza withdrawal plan, under which Israel would keep a narrow corridor on the Egyptian frontier pending possible security arrangements with Cairo. Inviting bids by July 12, the ministry said the southern Gaza Strip "canal" would be 15 metres (50 ft) to 25 metres (80 ft) deep and stretch...

alestinian sources report large IDF forces in the southern Gaza Strip ahead of expected operations to widen the Philadelphia corridor. Meanwhile, some 3000 Palestinians fled their homes in Rafah on Sunday following the High Court of Justice's turning down of a petition filed by 13 Palestinian residents against the IDF's decision to demolish houses adjacent to the Phildelphia Route in Rafah, Ynet reported. Advertisement The IDF revealed plans Sunday to create a 60 meter wide underground canal, 20 meters deep that is aimed at preventing the forging of arms-smuggling tunnels from the Egyptian side of Rafah to the Palestinian side....

Gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked several military checkpoints in Egypt’s Sinai region, killing 15 soldiers and two civilians, security sources said. The attacks defied one of the toughest security crackdowns in the country’s history. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks but militants who support Islamic State have previously carried out similar operations in the Sinai Peninsula.