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In early December, the People’s Liberation Army's (PLA) publication, China Defense Daily (Zhongguo Guofang Bao), published a report that provided a rare glimpse into an underground tunnel that is being built by the Second Artillery Corps (SAC)—the PLA's strategic missile forces—in the mountainous regions of Hebei Province in northern China. The network of tunnels reportedly stretches for more than 3,107 miles (Ta Kung Pao, December 11; Xinhua News Agency, December 14). The revelation of the semi-underground tunnel highlights the strides being made by China's nuclear modernization efforts, and underscores a changing deterrent relationship between the United States and China. China's...

Some people go cave exploring for fun, but when there is a possibility of stumbling on explosive materials, an armed enemy or a nasty surprise they've left to be triggered in the dark, it's about as far from fun as you can get. Marines from 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment are searching wet, pitch-dark tunnels ranging from 40 to 100 feet underground that connect the karez system – a network of wells and tunnels between the snow-capped peaks of the Buji Bhast mountains and the arid desert plain here. The karez system was originally constructed hundreds, maybe thousands, of years...

A computer belonging to alleged al Qaeda suspect Najibullah Zazi showed he had researched baseball and football stadiums and sites used in the recent Fashion Week event in New York City, law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com. As the 24-year-old was being questioned for a fourth straight day by FBI agents about his alleged ties to al Qaeda, law enforcement officials said the Denver man's computer showed he had researched baseball and football stadiums and sites used in the recent Fashion Week event in New York City. Zazi, 24, was scheduled to be questioned for a fourth straight day today by...

Hamas is digging tunnels next to United Nations facilities under the assumption that the IDF will not target them during a future conflict, defense officials warned on Sunday....officials said a tunnel Hamas had been digging adjacent to a UN school in Beit Hanun had collapsed earlier this month.

BANGKOK (AP) - The recent aborted voyage of a North Korean ship, photographs of massive tunnels and a top secret meeting have raised alarm bells that one of the world's poorest nations may be aspiring to join the nuclear club—with help from its friends in Pyongyang. No one expects military-run Myanmar, also known as Burma, to obtain an atomic bomb anytime soon, but experts have the Southeast Asian nation on their radar screen. "There's suspicion that something is going on, and increasingly that cooperation with North Korea may have a nuclear undercurrent. We are very much looking into it," says...

(07-02) 22:16 PDT San Diego, CA (AP) -- Authorities say they have found another secret tunnel near a San Diego border crossing. The 53-foot passageway, reinforced with plywood and equipped with battery-powered lights, was discovered Thursday as law enforcement officials were investigating an incomplete cross-border tunnel west of the San Ysidro crossing.

SNIPPET: "Israeli warplanes bombard two smuggling tunnels in southern Strip early Sunday after Palestinians fire rocket at Negev on Saturday" SNIPPET: "IDF fighter jets struck two Palestinian smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip in a pre-dawn raid on Sunday. The army said that two of the tunnels had been hit but there were no reports of casualties. The strike came in response to a Qassam attack on Israel's western Negev on Saturday. The Color Red alert system was sounded in parts of the area and residents reported of hearing a loud blast. No injuries or damager were reported in...

Another tunnel apparently dug by drug smugglers has been found beneath the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Ariz. Scioli said it’s the 63rd smuggling tunnel found beneath the border in the Nogales area since October 1995, and the 16th since last October.

May 26, 2009 On May 24, 2009, Egyptian security forces announced that they had arrested seven members of a terror cell [1] which, according to the confession of one of its members, had carried out the February 22, 2009 attack in Khan Al-Khalili. According to the announcement, the cell had ties to Al-Qaeda and to the Gaza salafi group Jaysh Al-Islam. [2] One of the captured terrorists, a Belgian national, confessed that he was supposed to travel to Belgium, make contact with Al-Qaeda operatives, and accompany them to France in order to prepare attacks there. The cell was also supposed...

Israeli warplanes bombed a Hamas security outpost and tunnels by the Gaza border with Egypt on Tuesday, after a rocket fired from the coastal territory struck an Israeli town, Israeli and Hamas sources said. Palestinian medics said a woman in Gaza suffered moderate wounds from one of several air strikes against tunnels Israel says are used to smuggle weapons into the coastal territory. Another raid targeted a Hamas outpost near a border fence with Israel, a Hamas source said. It was the first time Israel has attacked the Islamic militant group since a January 18 ceasefire went into effect after...

SNIPPET: "Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dave Gaubatz, the first U.S. civilian (1811) Federal Agent deployed to Iraq in 2003. He is currently the Director of the Mapping Sharia Project and the Owner of DG Counter-terrorism Publishing..." SNIPPET: "Below is a sampling of the results of the interrogations agents and I obtained: I have the documents, photographs, and contact information of Iraqis and U.S. personnel who were also aware. Anything I write or speak about can be verified. Simply ask VP Biden and our President to release the complete intelligence reports my team and I wrote in 2003. 1. When...

AUSTRALIAN special forces troops have killed a senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan in an operation expected to disrupt insurgent activity for some months. Mullah Noorullah and one other insurgent were tracked moving into a tunnel system in the Oruzgan area, where Australian forces are based. They were killed in a targeted operation, defence said. Noorullah, classed as a senior insurgent commander, was involved in the use of improvised explosive devices and rocket attacks against coalition forces. He was also understood to have been involved in the major battle with Afghan and Australian forces on April 12 in which up to...

Note: The following text is a quote: Ali Al-Marri Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Al-Qaeda Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 43, a dual national of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda. Al-Marri entered his guilty plea at a hearing this afternoon before Judge Michael M. Mihm in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois. In so doing, al-Marri admitted that he agreed with others to provide material support or resources to al-Qaeda in the form of personnel, including himself, to work under al-Qaeda’s...

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Once a profitable business, Abu Abdallah's tunnel under the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip has been out of work for three weeks due to an Egyptian security crackdown on smuggling. The Palestinian network of some 3,000 tunnels, created to thwart Israel's blockade of the coastal territory ruled by Hamas Islamists, was reduced to hundreds by bombing during Israel's three-week offensive in January. Now Egyptian police efforts are also biting into Gaza's underground supply system, which supplements the tightly restricted flow of aid commodities allowed in by the Israelis. "Tunnel business has dropped to...

BAGHDAD, April 20, 2009 – When terrorists who discovered tunnels underneath a heavily traveled road in western Baghdad used an improvised explosive device to blow a huge hole in the street to disrupt traffic, 225th Engineer Brigade engineers from Headquarters and Support Company, 46th Engineer Combat Battalion, were called in to repair the road and seal access to the underground tunnels. Army Staff Sgt. Xavier Bowie descends into a tunnel beneath a heavily traveled road in western Baghdad to shut off access to terrorists trying to emplace bombs, Feb. 12, 2009. U.S. Army photo by 1st Lt. Stephen Clements  (Click...

Egypt terror cell planned to strike in Tel Aviv Almasry Alyoum reports two Palestinian Fatah operatives suspected of membership in Hizbullah cell uncovered in Sinai confess to planning to infiltrate into Israel to carry out suicide attacks Roee Nahmias Published:  04.16.09, 15:38 / Israel News   Members of the Hizbullah cell uncovered in Egypt planned to carry out terror attacks inside Israel, Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum reported on Thursday.  According to the report, two of the cell's members are Fatah operatives, who confessed to having planned to enter Israel and carry out massive suicide attacks, "maybe even in Tel...

Published: 03.23.09, 11:54 / Israel News Egyptian police seized a flock of 560 sheep set to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip through underground tunnels. SNIPPET: "A security official says the flock was discovered on Sunday night, along with the entrances to six tunnels in the Salah el-Din district north of the Rafah border crossing. Police seized five tons of cement and found a half ton cache of TNT hidden in near the border."

The accused Al Qaeda mastermind of a foiled plot to use suicide bombers to blow up Hudson River tunnels has been freed in Lebanon on a mere $667 bail. Assem Hammoud's release from a Beirut jail occurred months ago, but was kept quiet until he appeared in a TV interview Tuesday claiming his innocence.

Just when I thought I’d seen every surprise the Middle East had to offer, I showed up on the Gaza/Egypt border. To understand why this is such a surprise you need to remember that Israel said the war in Gaza had two goals: 1) To stop the rocket fire and 2) To stop the smuggling of rockets into the Gaza strip and close the tunnels through which they are smuggled from the Egyptian side. So, I arrive at the border and find an entire community digging away like prospectors during the gold rush. It was all out in the open....

HERZLIYA, Israel – Egyptian troops are undergoing training in Texas on the use of American military technology to uncover Hamas weapons smuggling tunnels, WND has learned. A top Egyptian intelligence official told WND the Egyptian troops arrived in Texas in recent days, where they have been undergoing private courses on the use of proprietary, secretive U.S. technology that makes use of sonar and certain frequencies to locate underground tunnels along the Egypt-Gaza border. Also, the intelligence official said a team from the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers recently arrived in the Egyptian Sinai desert, bringing the advanced machinery with them....

Egypt has been exerting fierce pressure on Hamas over the past 24 hours to accept its ceasefire proposal, Palestinian sources told Ynet Sunday night. According to the sources, Cairo warned Hamas that should it refuse to accept the proposal the IDF would continue to expand its operation in Gaza, which in effect would mean an end to Hamas' rule over the coastal enclave it took over in June 2007. A Hamas delegation is currently in Cairo for the ceasefire talks, but it may return to the Strip on Monday. The Egyptian pressure stems from Israel's preparations for the third phase...

SNIPPET: "A North Texas imam is calling on Muslims to take up arms in defense of Palestinians in Gaza. Sheikh Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti, director of the Islamic Center of South Plains in Lubbock, Texas, participated in an online chat, "Fatwas on Gaza," at the web site IslamOnline.net. El-Shinqiti encouraged readers to fight - or if they can't, to send money to those who are fighting - in response to six out of the eight questions posed to him in the online chat. When asked what can be done to help the people in Gaza, El-Shinqiti emphasized war over sending food...

"HAMAS MISSILES FOR ISRAELI FOOD" (Added January 12, 2009) VIDEO DESCRIPTION - QUOTE: IsraelMFA January 12, 2009 Israel gives food, medicine and electricity to Gaza citizens and gets rockets in return. Category: News & Politics Tags: Israel Hamas war rockets missile humanitarian aid children shield Gaza

America's pro-terror 39th president blames Israel for the war in Gaza by insisting: "this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas!"

Cheney stressed the US support for the Gaza operation, saying the rocket fire on Israel must stop.

The large-scale Israeli offensive in Gaza has sent Hamas leaders and operatives physically under the ground. They are nowhere to be seen. None of them have appeared in public or in the media apart from a recorded speech by Hamas government chief Ismael Haniya. Prominent Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, who chose to remain on ground level, was killed Thursday by an Israeli missile attack on his house. Supplies go into a tunnel in Gaza For Israelis and Palestinians the whereabouts of Hamas leaders is no secret at all. For almost three years, Hamas was busy digging and building an extensive...

Two tunnels were discovered in Nogales over the weekend by Nogales police officers, making a four-day total of three tunnels found in the border city. Elsewhere, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped 17 people from entering the United States using fraudulent Canadian citizenship cards at the Douglas port of entry. Officers patrolling an area near downtown Nogales discovered a tunnel east of the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry about 6 p.m. Friday, said Mario Escalante, U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokes-man. Its opening was about 8 feet north of the border fence and hidden by weeds and a piece...

LONDON — For sale: a vast tunnel complex in central London. Former tenants include Britain’s secret service, the famous hot line between America and the Soviet Union during the cold war and 400 tons of government documents. The asking price is $7.4 million. After years of lying unused beneath the traffic-jammed streets of the city, the tunnel complex — one mile of underground corridors and adjacent rooms — is now for sale by the BT Group, Britain’s largest phone company. BT hopes the site’s special features will attract buyers even as the property market above ground is going through its...

There is rising criticism that the Machang Bridge, which opened in July at the cost of millions of won, is only enriching speculative capitalists with tax money. They say that throughout the country, roads built through private investment are becoming white elephants where investors eat tax money via rough traffic predictions and contracts with excessive profit guarantees. The province of South Gyeongsang spent 380 billion won (US$337 million) in budget outlays and 190 million won in private capital to build the Machang Bridge linking Changwon and Masan. For the next 30 years, the earnings from the bridge tolls will be...

Gaza smuggling tunnels are for milk, say Palestinians Gaza smuggling tunnels are for milk, say Palestinians Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons. The photographs show masked Palestinian militants lifting jugs of milk and sacks of baby food from the entrance to one of the tunnels on the Gaza side of the border. Israel insists that the tunnels, of which intelligence estimates indicate there are hundreds, are used to import small arms...

Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons.

(IsraelNN.com) The Arabic Al Jazeera television network has given its viewers an inside look at Hizbullah tunnels used in the Second Lebanon War, which the network noted was a military failure for Israel. The video clips revealed that the tunnels were equipped with showers, kitchens and "were planned like a house," according to the program's anchorman Ghassan Bin Jiddu. One clip showed a restroom with a water tank and a fan for ventilation. Bin Juddo explained that it took eight months to a year to complete a tunnel.

U.S. Army training Egyptians to find and destroy smuggling tunnels www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/991542.html The United States Army has begun training Egyptian soldiers to locate and destroy tunnels, in an effort to improve the Egyptian army's ability to cope with arms-smuggling from Sinai to the Gaza Strip. A second, larger group of Egyptian soldiers is also due to arrive shortly for training, which is taking place at a U.S. Army base in Texas. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is teaching the Egyptian troops how to use advanced technological equipment to find and destroy the tunnels, including instruments that measure ground fluctuations and...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

GAZA, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Israeli military officials said Friday they employed a new method to detect tunnels allegedly used for weapons smuggling to the Gaza Strip by Palestinians. The new method uses sensors in channels underground that are filled with water, an Israeli army spokesman told Israel Radio. The method is undergoing trials close to the Gaza Strip in western Negev. The tests are being hidden from the view of nearby Palestinians, Kuna reported Friday. The spokesman failed to reveal whether the new method would be put to use on borders separating Egypt and Gaza, the newspaper said.

Still in Control Pervez Musharraf was calm, confident and—despite a flurry of rumors—not about to announce his resignation. Instead, the Pakistani president's "concession" to his troubled nation was an announcement that he would allow Britain's Scotland Yard to help local law enforcement agencies with their investigation into last week's assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Speaking in a nationally televised address two hours after Pakistan's election commission announced the postponement of the ballot to Feb. 18, six weeks later than had been scheduled, Musharraf was notably deferential in his remarks about Bhutto, often invoking her "martyrdom" and extolling...

BAGHDAD — A network of underground tunnels near Iskandariyah used by al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) to store weapons, hide fighters and launch attacks against U.S. forces was discovered and subsequently destroyed by Coalition forces, Dec. 16. It was the first known find of a tunnel system in the Multi-National Division – Center area. Soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division found the tunnels as they were searching an area northwest of Iskandariyah, along the Euphrates River. Immediately prior, they discovered a cache of improvised explosive device (IED) components and...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

TECATE, Calif., Dec. 6 — The tunnel opening cut into the floor of a shipping container here drops three levels, each accessible by ladders, first a metal one and then two others fashioned from wood pallets. The tunnel stretches 1,300 feet to the south, crossing the Mexican border some 50 feet below ground and proceeding to a sky-blue office building in sight of the steel-plated border fence. Three or four feet wide and six feet high, the passageway is illuminated by compact fluorescent bulbs (wired to the Mexican side), supported by carefully placed wooden beams and kept dry by two...

KOLD News 13 Tucson is currently running a special report focused on a urgent FBI report outlining a possible terrorist threat in southern Arizona. It speaks specifically to Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista. The document gives no timetable or explanation of how the threat will be carried out. But it does say, “a group of Iraqis may have entered the United States through tunnels from Mexico into Arizona,” and those same “Iraqis are believed to be the ones who will perpetrate the attack on Fort Huachuca.

U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, has introduced the Toll Road Prohibition Act, the latest bill designed to prevent tolling on federally built highways. HR 3802, introduced Oct. 10, would require states and cities to repay the U.S. government all federal funds used for construction of highways, bridges or tunnels, along with “reasonable interest,� before introducing tolls. “The American people should not be required to pay for the same highway twice, once through their tax dollars and again through new tolls on federal interstate highways,� Boswell said. The legislation would not prohibit the states from entering into public-private toll agreements, but...

Cal Freeway Tunnel Safety Compromised Due to Greenie Laws A Disaster Waiting to Happen - 210 Freeway Transition Tunnels Guido Meindl - Pasadena Several years ago I brought to the attention of City Council Members the potential disaster waiting to happen on the Transition Tunnels from the 210 South bound to the 210 East bound. Truck traffic on the 210 has continued to increase exponentially over the past and there is no abatement in sight. The recent collision of 2 18 Wheelers on the 210 near Arroyo/Windsor and now the disastrous collision of 30 vehicles in the I-5 Truck Tunnel...

Al Qaeda 'Re-Emerging' in Pakistan Sanctuaries The U.S. military said Tuesday it expected Al Qaeda to continue its "re-emergence" in sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas from where it supported attacks in Afghanistan. Sanctuary was provided to Al Qaeda and Taliban rebels after Islamabad signed a peace deal with militants in a desperate attempt to quell the unrest in its federally administered areas in September 2006, a U.S. military official said. The militants called off the deal in July this year after Pakistani security forces raided a radical mosque in Islamabad where rebels had massed. Dozens were killed in those...

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States has found a half-built smuggling tunnel running under a border crossing checkpoint between Mexico and Arizona, the second discovery of a tunnel in less than a week, U.S. border officials said on Tuesday. Border agents noticed a small hole in one of the gate's vehicle lanes on the U.S. side leading out of downtown Nogales into the Mexican sister city of the same name on Sunday. They found a crudely built opening to the 30-foot-long (9-meter-long) tunnel. Officials believe this is the first tunnel dug directly underneath a legal crossing gate along the...

By day, Lazar Kunstmann is a typically avant-garde Parisian, an urbane, well-spoken video film editor who hangs out in the fashionable Latin Quarter. By night he inhabits a strange and secret world with its base in the tunnels beneath the French capital – the world of the urban explorers. Mr Kunstmann belongs to les UX, a clandestine network that is on a mission to discover and exploit the city’s neglected underworld. The urban explorers put on film shows in underground galleries, restore medieval crypts and break into monuments after dark to organise plays and readings. In the eyes of their...

FRESNO, Calif. — Tunnels run beneath Chinatown in Fresno, Calif.: brick-walled passages that were once home to people and activities that couldn't be mentioned aboveground. Rick Lew knows, because he walked the passages as a child, entering through a trapdoor in his grandfather's liquor store. "There was a nightlife you couldn't see from the streets," he said.< >As late as the 1950s, when Lew was a boy, Chinatown was still thriving — both its respectable establishments and as its shadier side. He remembers visiting the underground world with his father, first passing though a dark basement before descending into a...

First World War tunnels to yield their secrets By Jasper Copping, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:42am BST 26/08/2007 As battle raged across the fields of Flanders, British soldiers found brief respite from the horrors of the First World War in "underground towns" far below the mud and gore. Now, more than 90 years after the armies left and the extraordinary networks of tunnels were flooded, the task of finally revealing their secrets has begun. The Tunnels The prize, archaeologists and historians believe, is an unprecedented insight into the lives of British troops on the Western Front. They believe that, because...

WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- U.S. Intelligence experts said they fear Iran may try to thwart future military strikes against its nuclear facility by placing key parts underground. U.S. officials and independent experts said Iran appears to be building a tunnel complex inside a mountain, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The sudden flurry of digging seen in recent satellite photos of a mountainside in central Iran might have passed for ordinary road tunneling. But the site is the back yard of Iran's most ambitious and controversial nuclear facility, leading U.S. officials and independent experts to reach another conclusion: It appears to be the start of a major tunnel complex inside the mountain. The question is, why? Worries have been stoked by the presence nearby of fortified buildings where uranium is being processed. Those structures in turn are now being connected by roads to Iran's nuclear site at Natanz, where the...

Switzerland has opened the world's longest rail tunnel on land - the 34-kilometre (21-mile) Loetschberg tunnel under the Alps. It will cut the journey time between Germany and Italy by at least a third.