Hamas has joined the Syrian rebels and has introduced its tunnel smuggling expertise while training rebels and fighting with them against its former ally Syrian President Bashar Assad, The London Times reported Friday.

Quoting anonymous Western sources, the newspaper stated, “The Qassam Brigades have been training units very close to Damascus. These are specialists. They are really good.”

Hamas reportedly is helping rebels build tunnels for weapons to be used on an assault on Damascus, Assad’s stronghold.

Syria hosts half a million Arabs classified by the United Nations as “Palestinian refugees,” whose support for Hamas would bolster its strength against its rival Fatah movement, headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas denied the report and explained that one of its members who was killed outside Damascus last summer had left the terrorist organization.

Hamas’ London-based official Osama Hamdan stated, “We don’t interfere in the internal problems of Syria. Our members there are normal civilians, Syrian Palestinians, who live with their families there.”

However, it is “common knowledge” that Hamas agents are fighting with he rebels in refugee camps, according to a source in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp

Sources also told the London newspaper that Qatar, which has donated a quarter of a billion dollars to Hamas in Gaza and has promised more, may have persuaded Hamas to join the civil war.

De facto Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said in Cairo in February, almost at the same time the Emir of Qatar paid an historic visit to Gaza, “I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.”

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood regime has been flooding Hamas smuggling tunnels for three days in a move that may be aimed at punishing Sinai terrorists who threaten Cairo’s authority but also may be a warning to Hamas of who is the boss.

Ironically, heavy rains last month forced Hamas to close the tunnels, but now Egypt is taking over where nature left off.

In fact, Egypt started sealing off he tunnels last year by using cement, but flooding them is more efficient although more deadly for anyone trapped in the tunnels.

The smuggling tunnels have long been a source of up to one-third of goods and merchandise, including diesel fuel, for Gaza. They also are a vehicle for terrorists to travel between Gaza and the northern Sinai and for the flow of advanced arms and explosives.

Cairo has not forgotten that terrorists killed 16 Egyptian soldiers and policemen last August in a well-planned attack that also targeted Israel. Hamas denied Egyptian charges that the terrorists arrived in the northern Sinai through tunnels, but in a region where the truth is a lie and the lie only sometimes is the truth, Egypt rejected Hamas’ innocence and has shut down approximately 200 smuggling tunnels since then.

This week’s flooding dampens any illusion by Hamas that it is the Muslim Brotherhood government’s favorite son, even though it was the Brotherhood that gave birth to Hamas decades ago.

Nicolas Pelham, a writer on Arab affairs for The Economist and the New York Review of Books, wrote for the Institute of Palestine Studies last summer that Hamas euphoria over the Muslim Brotherhood victory in Egypt’s election was premature.

“Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011 could yet spell the collapse of the tunnel economy,” according to Pelham.

“Led by Hamas leaders, Gazans look to Egypt’s new Islamist leadership to dismantle the siege structures and open the crossing to overland goods traffic…. In a sign of renewed leverage over Gaza, and reflecting a desire to cut their subsidy bill, the Egyptian authorities blocked tanker trucks en route to Gaza hauling heavily subsidized Egyptian gasoline….

“The shortages not only rendered life uncomfortable, [but] they [also] deprived it of the dynamo to power more reconstruction. With Gaza’s fate increasingly intertwined with Egypt’s, the dominance of the military government, along with the Muslim Brotherhood’s focus on domestic affairs, cast a pall over the prospects for Gaza’s trade ties with Egypt.”

The IDF discovered a terror tunnel inside Israel that originated from within the Gaza strip. The tunnel’s reached 100 meters inside Israel, and ended between Kibbutz Nir Oz and the Gaza security fence.

The IDF troops were on operational duty at the time near the southern Gaza border when they saw a section of ground that collapsed. Upon closer investigation it was discovered that a section of the ground over the tunnel had collapsed inward, apparently because of the rain.

The IDF is trying to determine when the tunnel was dug, and is looking at this as a very serious event, and very specifically as an attempt to commit a terror attack against Israeli civilians and the IDF.

The IDF tweeted that the large tunnel was similar to the tunnel used to kidnap Gilad Shalit in 2006.

There is also concern that there might be additional tunnels in the area that weren’t discovered.

On Monday, Abu Muhmad, spokesman for Islamic Jihad said that, “Kidnapping soldiers is the only way to free Palestinian prisoners from jail.”