Gaza operatives killed while working on terror tunnels. The heading reads: ‘The men of the tunnels who are in their graves.’ Photo: Facebook.

In a warning to residents of Gaza that Hamas is exploiting them, the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry unit responsible for civilian issues there and in the West Bank said on Facebook that anyone engaged in tunnel construction for the terrorist organization is “writing his own death sentence,” the Hebrew news site nrg reported on Thursday.

According to the report, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories IDF Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai wrote in Arabic, “Since Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in the summer of 2014, 30 Palestinians have been killed while digging tunnels. Some were killed in tunnel collapses, some in ‘work accidents’ and the rest, God knows from what else… The tunnels are becoming a flourishing ‘Made in Hamas’ death industry. Hamas is using you to further its own interests. You dig tunnels for those who do not care about your lives.”

This, said nrg, echoed comments made a few weeks ago by an anonymous senior Israeli military official, who claimed that the new underground barrier being built by Israel along its border with Gaza will turn the Hamas tunnel network into a “death trap.”

As was reported in The Algemeiner last month, the IDF has begun erecting the giant wall, which will extend several stories above ground and below.

In addition, as The Algemeiner reported in March, an underground defense system to detect and destroy Hamas tunnels was proposed by the IDF to the Knesset, and will be partly funded by the US government. Though details of the system — called “The Obstacle” — have been kept under wraps, security analysts said it will likely involve the use of acoustic sensors that can pick up sounds of digging or construction well beneath the surface of the earth.