Report: Shalit held in booby trapped building in S. Gaza

Channel Two television reported Sunday that an Israel Defense Forces soldier captured a year ago was being held in the southern Gaza Strip in an underground room inside a booby-trapped building.

Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen in a cross-border raid into Israel from the Gaza Strip on June 25, 2006.

The reports said Shalit was being held near Shaboura refugee camp, close to the town of Rafah in the southern part of the coastal territory.

The report said the information had come from Hamas sources.

Israeli officials declined to comment and a militant source representing one of the three groups holding Shalit said the report was "speculation and imagination".

The television report said Shalit was being cared for by two captors with whom he had formed a "cordial" relationship and he was being treated fairly.

Shalit's living quarters were described as a two-room underground store with enough supplies to last two weeks, accessible down a ladder through a 15-meter deep shaft which the report said was lined with explosives.

It added that the captors receive supplies and newspaper cuttings every two weeks and that they had been ordered to take good care of their prisoner.

Last year, Shalit's captors refused to accept a pair of eye glasses sent by his parents because they feared they were embedded with miniature electronic devices.