GAZA: Masked Palestinian gunmen blew a 4 meter wide hole on Thursday in the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt after Israel launched a military campaign to free a kidnapped soldier, witnesses said. Two Palestinian security personnel were injured in the explosion, and security forces were ordered to the area to prevent people from going through the hole. The Rafah border crossing has been closed since Sunday, when militants on a cross border raid into Israel killed two soldiers and abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit. Egypt has deployed riot police along its side of the border with Gaza to stop any Palestinian attempts to cross illegally during the Israeli raid. The times are hard. People want to go to Egypt, take a trip, buy some goods, get a breath of fresh air, said Abu Wiam, 18, standing among the crowd by the wall. "The Jews are closing our whole world so they wanted to open the world, said another witness who gave his name as Abu Zaman Jarayda. Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed illegally into Egypt from the Gaza Strip last September when Israeli forces withdrew from the corridor between the territories. Agencies
