JERUSALEM, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Israel said on Saturday that its air force struck and disabled a "combat tunnel" in the Gaza Strip that reached near Israeli territory.

A military spokesperson accused Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist group that runs Gaza, of building the tunnel.

The route of the tunnel ran from the besieged Palestinian enclave and stopped a few meters before the security fence.

The spokesperson said in a statement that the tunnel was planned to cross into Israel before Israeli fighter jets bombed it on Saturday night.

The route passed near the Erez Crossing, a humanitarian passage in the northern Gaza Strip, and was supposed to end underneath an Israeli community near the fence.

The tunnel was connected to another one that was dug under the Kerem Shalom Crossing which was destroyed by Israel in January.

Israel has destroyed several cross-border tunnels over the past year, the last of them in April.

"The identification and neutralization of the tunnel is part of an ongoing effort to thwart the underground terror from the Gaza Strip," said the spokesperson.

Israel's Defense Minister accused Hamas of "talking about its willing in a long-term appeasement but actually, it continues to dig terror tunnel."

"We will continue to strike terror infrastructure," the minister said in a statement.

He added that the only possible agreement with Gaza is "demilitarization (of the Gaza Strip) in return for rehabilitation."