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Ahmed Hamdi
Tunnel
West entry to the Ahmed Hamdi
Tunnel
The Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel is
an automobile
tunnel under the Suez Canal. It has two
lanes of traffic, one in each direction, and connects the
Asian Sinai Peninsula
to the town of Suez on the
African mainland.
Construction
It was
originally constructed as a shield tunnel by the
Tarmac Construction
in 1981 In 1992,
the Japanese government
granted aid to a project aimed at
rehabilitating the tunnel which had developed leaks. It is 1.63 km
long and has an outside diameter of 11.6 m.
Significant developments in the
region
The tunnel
was part of a major drive to develop the areas surrounding
the Suez Canal, including
other projects such as the Suez Canal
overhead line crossing (completed
in 1998), the El Ferdan Railway
Bridge, and the Suez Canal Bridge
(completed in
2001).
Ahmed
Hamdi
MARTYR AHMED
HAMDI
Ahmed Hamdi
(20 May 1929 - 14 October 1973) was an Egyptian engineer. He also
was a general of the third army of Egypt, during the
Yom Kippur
war. He was killed while crossing the Suez
Canal with his soldiers and was awarded the Sinai
star posthumously.
He was a
graduate of the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo
University. In 1951 he
joined the Egyptian Air Force, and then transferred to the
engineering force in 1954. He travelled to the Soviet Union, where
he passed a training for leaders at the High Military Academy
Frunze. In the war of 1956 he was known as "the pure hand", because
he detonated thousands of land-bombs, before they exploded. He
exploded the El Ferdan Railway
Bridge, in order to prevent Israeli soldiers
from passing upon it.
He had
installed watching points upon steel towers, on the western bank of
the Suez Canal, beneath
the trees, in order to watch Israeli troops' movements, while there
were no means or sand hills, to permit this watching. He had chosen
the location of these towers
himself.
In 1971, he
was in charge of the preparation of a group of soldiers, who had to
install a bridge which will assure the safe transfer of the 3rd
army to the other side of the Suez Canal. Finally,
he found out the idea of throwing highly pressured water on the
Bar-Lev wall, in order to destroy
it.
He was the
leader of the engineering group that was in charge of executing the
engineering works for the 3rd army, and while the groups were the
most important in Yom Kippur
(6 October
War).
In
1971, he was in charge of preparing a group of troops to install a
new bridge, that would assure the safe transfer of the 3rd army, to
the other side of the canal. He had also helped in the development
of the Soviet production bridges, in order to adapt them to the
Suez Canal situation. In fact, he enhanced the old Russian bridges
deployment from 12 hours to 4
hours.
He
was wounded while the Egyptian army was crossing the canal, where
he had saved one of the bridges. He was later shot and killed
during the same operation. He had refused to stay in the command
center with the other generals in order to be with his officers and
soldiers.
Egypt had
honored him by dedicating to his name, Sinai
Star first rank, this prize is the highly
military prize in Egypt. His death day was chosen to be Engineer
Day, and president Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
named a tunnel that links
Sinai to the rest
of the Egyptian land after him, it's called the
Ahmed Hamdi
Tunnel.
His
children were 13, 10 and 6 when he
died.
FROM
WIKIPEDIA
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