The Egyptian army began expanding its operations Oct. 4 to demolish the homes of civilians in the Egyptian city of Rafah as part of the third stage of building a border buffer zone with the Gaza Strip.

Since October 2014, the Egyptian army has worked on establishing a buffer zone along the border line with Gaza as part of the security plan to destroy tunnels used for smuggling between Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian government accuses Hamas of using the tunnels to carry out terrorist operations inside Egypt.

Al-Monitor received a copy of the press statements of the governor of northern Sinai, Abdel Fattah Harhoor, in which he said that the third phase consists of an area of 500 meters (0.3 miles) wide, thus destroying all the houses and buildings there. During the first and second stages, 500 meters were added to the buffer zone per stage, and with the latest developments, the width of the buffer zone would reach 1,500 meters (0.9 miles) with a length of 13 kilometers (8 miles).

Harhoor noted that the third phase comes in the framework of the army protecting Egypt’s national security and countering terrorism that is seeping into Sinai from the Gaza Strip through the tunnels.