The IDF is still on a high state of alert due to concern of Islamic Jihad reprisal attacks after Israel blew up an attack tunnel that originated in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Security officials warned that the IDF would respond very forcefully to any reprisal attack, that after the military wing of Islamic Jihad released a video clip threatening Israel, in which it showed its preparations for firing rockets toward Israel’s southern communities. The clip shows Palestinian militants placing rockets at the entrances to a tunnel and observing the work being carried out by the IDF near the Gaza Strip border fence. At the end of the clip, a Hebrew caption appears saying, “Time is running out, the Al-Quds Brigades.”
Meanwhile, The Red Cross requested that the IDF permit a search for the bodies of the terrorists who are still under the ruins of the demolished tunnel. Israel’s military coordinator of government activities in the territories spoke yesterday with the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Israel, Jacques De Maio, and made it clear to him that Israel would not permit the search operations within the security perimeter in the Gaza Strip, which Palestinians are barred from entering, without progress on the issue of returning the bodies of Israeli soldiers that are held by the Islamist Hamas organization since the last Gaza war, as well as Israelis that are currently being held in Hamas captivity.