Another member of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas was killed in a tunnel collapse, Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday.

The man was identified as 27-year-old Marwan Maarouf of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Palestinian reports indicate that Maarouf was the eleventh member of Hamas to die in a tunnel collapse in recent weeks. A collapse that killed seven members of the terror group last month was attributed to flooding.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot recently hinted that Israel has been employing measures to counter the threat of the terror tunnels. “We are doing a lot” in response, he said at a conference at Herzliya’s Interdisciplinary Center, “but many of [the things we do] are hidden from the public. We have dozens, if not a hundred, engineering vehicles on the Gaza border.”

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Saturday that Egypt had flooded a number of tunnels in coordination with Israel and said that security cooperation with Egypt was “better than ever.”

Ha’aretz military analyst Amos Harel wrote last month that Hamas had built at least as many attack tunnels as it had before its 2014 war with Israel. Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh wrote last week that the effort and expense that Hamas has invested in rebuilding the tunnels, even as Gaza remains mired in poverty, showed that “the last thing Hamas cares about is the welfare of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

[Photo: Emad Nassar / Flash90 ]