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Terror equipment found in mailbags at Gaza crossing

Weapon sights, communications and scuba-diving gear were among the “dual-use” equipment found by Israeli security officers at the Erez Crossing in mailbags on the way to the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli soldier from the Erez Battalion checks IDs and Palestinian vehicles at the checkpoint to the Shuafat Refugee Camp in eastern Jerusalem on Dec. 22, 2015. Photo: Hadas Parush/Flash90.
An Israeli soldier from the Erez Battalion checks IDs and Palestinian vehicles at the checkpoint to the Shuafat Refugee Camp in eastern Jerusalem on Dec. 22, 2015. Photo: Hadas Parush/Flash90.

An Israeli security officer at the Erez Crossing between Gaza and Israel seized and confiscated a large number of mailbags filled with packages containing weapons, communications and scuba-diving equipment that was being smuggled into Gaza, according to a report in Israel’s Ma’ariv daily on Thursday.

Of 250 mailbags set to be transported by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)—the unit in the Israeli Defense Ministry responsible for implementing Israeli government policy in the Area C of the West Bank and vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip—172 were deemed to contain “suspected dual-use products.”

Those items were a collection of electronic and military equipment that could potentially be used for to carry out terrorist attacks.

They included weapon sights, scanners, hidden cameras, diving lights, military boots, digital microscopes, weapons holsters and more.

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