Islamic Jihad terrorists. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Hamas has built a sophisticated network of tunnels that it has used to penetrate Israel to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians and soldiers and smuggle goods and weapons in and out of Gaza through the Sinai Peninsula.

A Palestinian terrorist, a member of the Islamic Jihad terror organization, was killed on Sunday in Gaza when the terror-tunnel he was working in collapsed.

Several other terror operatives managed to escape the tunnel collapse. They were taken to a Gaza hospital for treatment.

Palestinian sources said the dead terrorist was 25 years old, and that the incident occurred in Beit Hanun, in the northern Strip.

Several Palestinian terrorists from several factions were killed earlier in the year in a dozen incidents of tunnel collapses.

The wet winter weather, Egyptian operations against the tunnels and possible Israeli involvement were all indicated as possible causes for the tunnel collapses.

The Hamas terror organization is employing over 1,000 residents of Gaza in the digging of its cross-border tunnels, and is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly in wages. Each digger receives $300-400 a month.

Hamas has built a sophisticated network of tunnels that it has used to penetrate Israel to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians and soldiers and smuggle goods and weapons in and out of Gaza through the Sinai Peninsula.

The IDF destroyed most of the tunnels during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, but Hamas has since been working vigorously to rebuild the network, many times at the expense of innocent Gazans, from whom they steal building materials, which they use for military build-up.