15-Oct-17: Rockets strike southern Israel from Sinai

Incoming hostile rockets were detected at about 10:15 tonight (Sunday) in southern Israel, and as a result the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) warning system was activated in multiple communities.

The IDF says there were two rockets and unlike the recent spate of inbound missiles from Gaza where Hamas runs everything, these originated in Sinai. The last time we saw Sinai rockets here was during the inaugural Trump visit five months ago: "23-May-17: In the midst of US presidential visit, ISIS plays its hand".

No indication yet of whether there has been any damage to property or worse. Israel National News says explosions were heard in the Eshkol region. Times of Israel quotes the IDF:

A military spokesperson said they were still looking for the rockets, indicating that they likely struck an open field, rather than a populated area. The army did not immediately identify who launched the rockets, but it was likely a Sinai affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Some background via Ynet:

Earlier in the day [Sunday], suspected Islamic State militants attacked six checkpoints in the turbulent north of the Sinai Peninsula, killing six [Egyptian] soldiers and wounding 37, according to [Egyptian] security and hospital officials. The officials said the near-simultaneous attacks took place at and around the town of Sheikh Zweid, with dozens of militants using heavy machine guns and mortars... Egyptian security forces have for years battled militants in northern Sinai, which borders the Gaza Strip and Israel. But the insurgency there has gained momentum after the Egyptian military ousted an elected Islamist president [Morsi] in 2013.

Sheikh Zuweid (using the more common spelling) is a Sinai town of some 60,000 Bedouin that has been under the control of ISIS since 2015. Reuters adds this evening to what we know from Ynet when it says

At least 24 militants and six soldiers were killed on Sunday in attacks on military outposts in North Sinai, the Egyptian military said in a statement. The statement did not give details, but security and medical sources said about 20 members of the security forces had also been injured when more than 100 militants repeatedly attacked security outposts south of the border town of Sheikh Zuweid. The attackers used car bombs and rocket propelled grenades (RPG), the sources said.

Egypt's Sinai has been in a state of almost complete chaos for the past six years. This Jerusalem Post
backgrounder ["Lawlessness and terror: The Beduin kingdom of Sinai"] from March 2012 traces the spiraling downwards.

23-May-17: In the midst of US presidential visit, ISIS plays its hand

Manchester Arena, Monday night [Image Source]

Times of Israel reports today (Tuesday) that

a rocket was fired from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula at southern Israel on Tuesday morning, amid a visit to the country by US President Donald Trump, the army said. No injury or damage was caused by the missile, the army said. Israeli troops launched a search for the impact site in the Eshkol region, which abuts the Sinai Peninsula. In some cases, rockets launched toward Israel do not cross the border and end up landing inside Egyptian territory. No organization took immediate responsibility, but previous such incidents have been claimed by the Islamic State terror group’s Sinai affiliate. The incoming rocket alert was not activated during the attack, as the military calculated the projectile was not heading toward a populated area.

Social media reports indicate the rocket was fired into Israel during the morning peak traffic hour, roughly 7:30 am, when large number of Israeli children in the target area are making their way to school.

Claims were made this afternoon that the Islamic State terrorists are also taking credit for last night's horrifying massacre at Manchester Arena:

The attack, which killed at least 22 people, including an 18-year-old college student, and left around 59 injured, was described by British Prime Minister Theresa May as "the worst attack the city has experienced."
The news comes after outlets reported that ISIS supporters were celebrating the bombing on social media, hailing it as a victory against "the crusaders" of the West and framing it as a response to airstrikes in Iraq. According to the Daily Telegraph, one video showed an English-speaking ISIS supporter holding up a sign reading 'Manchester' with the date of the attack. A statement made via ISIS channels on the messaging app Telegram said that "one of the soldiers of the caliphate placed explosive devices in a gathering of crusaders in the middle of the British city of Manchester," hinting that the terrorist incident was not a suicide attack, as it is believed to have been. It said the bombing was a response to Britain’s “transgressions against the lands of the Muslims.” Pro-ISIS accounts had earlier celebrated the attack on social media, framing it as a response to airstrikes in Iraq. [TIME, today]

20-Feb-17: In Sinai, rocket-equipped ISIS jihadists remind Israelis this morning of an ongoing threat

Egyptian soldiers standing guard at a strategic site in Egypt's Sinai Desert, November 2015 [Image Source] 

Times of Israel reports this morning (Monday) that two rockets (mischievously and disingenuously described in a Guardian report today as "hand-made") were fired from Sinai into southern Israel's Eshkol region in the past hour. They crashed into open fields. It's reported that no one was injured and there are no signs of any damage caused in the attack, according to the IDF.

The Iron Dome incoming rocket alert system that has delivered breathtakingly-effective defensive results for the benefit of the thousands of Israelis living within range of the massively-well-equipped rocket jihadists in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai desert, was not activated this time. That's evidently because the system instantly computed that no populated Israeli area was threatened by the trajectory of the rockets.

So far, no terrorist group has claimed credit for the attack. But Times of Israel notes that it came hours after the Islamic State terrorists based in Sinai had accused Israel of killing five of its members in an airstrike.

According to Amaq news agency, an official media arm of the terror group, an Israeli drone struck a car with five Islamic State members in a village in the northern Sinai near the Egypt-Israel border on Saturday. The strike occurred near the village of Shabana, south of the town of Rafah, Amaq said. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment, but generally refrains from confirming or denying strikes outside of Israel. ["Two rockets from Sinai hit southern Israel, IDF says", Times of Israel, February 20, 2017]

Ynet late last night (Sunday) quoted an ISIS news agency called al-Amaq saying that an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had attacked a vehicle in a village in the northern Rafah part of Egypt's Sinai desert the day before (Saturday). It said five members of its local group were killed in the Israeli attack and that, in Amaq's words they "fell as martyrs to the Jewish enemy", naming one of the dead jihadists as Hatab al-Maqdasi.

Ten days earlier, ISIS had claimed credit for four rockets fired into Eilat from Sinai [which we reported here]. ISIS had said then

A number of rockets were launched at Jewish centers in Eilat, known as Umm Rashrash. The Jews and Crusaders should know that the war of the apostles will not save them in any way. ["ISIS says Israel killed 5 of its members", Ynet, February 19, 2017]

A Financial Times article yesterday indicates the scale of what's at stake:

Isis operations in Egypt have largely remained confined to the jihadi group’s northern Sinai stronghold, but the group remains the biggest security threat facing the state. They have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen and have periodically been able to strike beyond their area with devastating impact... The northern Sinai, a large desert region that borders Gaza and Israel has long been blighted by lawlessness, neglected by Cairo and roamed by smugglers. The Sinai jihadis started out as a local group targeting Israel. But they intensified attacks against Egyptian security forces in 2013 after the army’s ouster of an elected Islamist president. In 2014 they swore allegiance to Isis naming themselves “Sinai Province.” ["Civilians caught in crossfire as Egypt battles Isis in Sinai", Financial Times, February 19, 2017] 

A 2016 BBC Monitoring backgrounder [here] says the Sinai-based jihadists have given signs of softening a previously harsh towards the Islamists of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It had previously criticized them for adopting "infidel democracy" but later called them "supporters of peacefulness" in encouraging them to revolt against Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

While ISIS have a host of determined enemies, there are obvious strategic reasons why they prefer to be seen as losing martyrs to the Israelis rather than the Egyptians, whether or not the evidence is with them.

09-Feb-17: Islamists claim credit for today's Arab-on-Israeli rockets, shootings, stabbings:

Eilat by night [Image Source]

Two very different Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attacks today are major talking points within Israel - and almost entirely unreported and unanalyzed beyond our borders.

Around 11 o'clock Wednesday night, a barrage of missiles were fired at nearby Eilat from a site in the Sinai desert. The Jerusalem Post, quoting the IDF's Southern Command, reported that four rockets were fired, three of them being safely intercepted in mid-air by its Iron Dome defense system. (Click for a video of one such intercept.) Several people were treated for shock in Eilat's Yoseftal Medical Center hospital.

Haaretz reported during Thursday afternoon that ISIS is claiming to be behind the attack:

The Islamic State group's affiliate in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the barrage of rockets fired at the southern city of Eilat Wednesday night. The ISIS-aligned Amaq news agency announced that the affiliate, which calls itself the Sinai Province, fired several Grad rockets toward the Red Sea resort city. The report stated that the war against "the infidels" will continue and that the war against ISIS will not help the unbelievers. It added that future attacks would be much more severe.

Then this evening (Thursday), between five and eight people (accounts vary) were injured in a shooting/stabbing attack on Baron Hirsch Street, Petah Tikva near the city's outdoor market during it busiest hours of the week. The attacker, armed with what Ynet calls a makeshift rifle, opened fire on unsuspecting civilians standing at a bus stop and walking around the market. His weapon jammed as he got to a sewing-machine shop and at that point he began attacking people with a screwdriver. Someone threw (yes) a sewing machine at him, causing him to fall to the ground. Eye witnesses say he screamed "help, help" and was then helped by being arrested.

He turns out to be a 19-year-old male from a village near Nablus. (Ma'an News Agency names it as Beita.) Tonight he is under arrest and in an Israeli hospital where his injuries are being treated. Several of the people he attacked were rushed to nearby Rabin Medical Center at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. No one's life is in danger, fortunately.

He was still in possession of the gun used in the attack when arrested, according to a police spokesperson quoted by Times of Israel.

The Islamist terror regime in Gaza, Hamas, praised the attack as a “natural result” of Israeli crimes, according to a Times of Israel report but stopped short of claiming credit - though, in traditional manner, it urged other Palestinian Arabs to follow the attacker's example.

04-Jul-15: Friday's attack on southern Israel: three rockets and a volley of unchallenged disinformation

Screen shot from i24news.tv's coverage

Shavua tov! Following-up Friday's rocket attack on southern Israel:

A third rocket that was part of a volley of projectiles fired into southern Israel on Friday by Islamic State-linked terrorists in Sinai was found in the Eshkol Regional Council region on Saturday. Authorities initially found only two of the rockets on Friday. The two exploded in open ground inside Israeli territory near the Gaza Strip, causing little damage and no casualties. Israeli residents in the area said they heard a third rocket land. The IS-affiliated Wilayat Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack. “Three Grad rockets were fired at Jewish positions in occupied Palestine,” the group said Friday evening in a statement on Twitter. [Times of Israel, today]

The reference to "Occupied Palestine" is to the Eshkol and Negev regions of the State of Israel.

No one with even superficial familiarity with international law calls them occupied or Palestine. The only voices that do are those calling for the destruction of Israel as a state, along with the people living within its borders.

Nonetheless, numerous news services - like Aljazeera, Deutsche Welle, Al-Ahram, AFP, France24, and naturally Iran's state-controlled news service - faithfully republished the Islamist tweet in today's global news torrent, making no effort to point out to their news consumers the anti-Israel Islamist propaganda nature of the entirely bogus claim.

It's a fair bet that close to 100% of their audience will swallow the "Occupied Palestine" claim without hesitating for a moment to check the facts - just like those news editors.

03-Jul-15: Inbound rocket warnings heard in southern Israel

Around 4:20 pm Friday (today), Israel's Color Red rocket warning system began sounding across southern Israel. Details are still sketchy but Times of Israel says an explosion inside Israel was detected. Ynet is reporting a rocket landing in

an open area at the Eshkol Regional Council, close to then Israeli-Egyptian border. Because of the proximity to the border, the IDF believes the rocket was possibly fired from the Sinai Peninsula and not from the Gaza Strip.

UPDATE Friday 6:30 pm: According to Reuters:

Militants [a hopelessly inadequate word that deliberately conceals more than it reveals about Islamist terrorists] in Egypt's Sinai peninsula fired a rocket into southern Israel on Friday, causing no casualties, an Israeli military source said, confirming earlier media reports. "Yes, the rocket was fired from Sinai," the source said. Israeli police said the rocket landed in an open area causing no damage or casualties.

A revised version of the Ynet report now [Friday 6:55 pm] refers to a claim of "credit" by an especially notorious group of Islamist savages:

The Islamic State-affiliated Salafist organization in Gaza, the Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, claimed responsibility over the firing of the Sinai-made rocket.

The intentions of the terrorists with the rockets were certainly not to hit an open area and to inflict no damage and no casualties. Their intentions were, and routinely are, murderous. This point is somehow overlooked by the editors of news reports like this one who are evidently content to have their readers walk away with the impression that this was something military or militant, whatever that means. This was an attempt to kill people - any people, just so long as they were on the Israeli side of the border. So long as editors allow their timidity and brainless devotion to "We're not comfortable being judgmental about this", most people in most people are going to remain clueless about the dangers posed to them and their communities by terrorists in general and Islamist terrorists in particular.

01-Jul-15: ISIS violence, terror and chaos rage on Israel's southern flank

Scene of the Cairo assassination of Egypt's state prosecutor
on Monday [Image Source]

Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has grown steadily more restive in the past two years. We have posted dozens of times during that period [see "Sinai"], tracking the crescendo of Arab-on-Arab violence and terrorism that has exacted a steady toll of lives in the desert as well as in Egypt's cities. Today, in Egypt and in its capital city, Egypt is at war.

Just two days ago, on Monday June 29, 2015, Hisham Barakat, who had served as Egypt's state prosecutor since July 2013, was killed when his secure motorcade was hit by a bomb blast in the capital Cairo [source: Aljazeera]. Barakat's appointment had come very soon after Egypt's military removed the country's elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi. In the course of the past two years, Barakat was responsible for a series of legal measures directed at reducing the power of the Islamists, including freezing the assets of 15 prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ordering the arrest of the group's Supreme Leader leader, Mohamed Badie.

We showed Badie embracing Hamas arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal back in January 2012. Badie was charged with inciting violence outside the Republican Guard headquarters where 51 people were killed.

Deposed president Morsi, along with hundreds of his supporters, have since been sentenced to death by Egypt's courts in a series of mass trials. Barakat also oversaw the court acquittal of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

There's some background to the events of the past few days. During May 2015, ISIS' Egyptian affiliate urged its followers

to attack judges, opening a new front in the world's most populous Arab state. Earlier in the same month, three judges were shot dead in the northern Sinai city of al-Arish... [Aljazeera] 

Then, right after Monday's assassination in Cairo, a visibly infuriated Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, publicly pledged to escalate the battle against the Islamic "militant" terrorists. An AFP report published yesterday captured some of the anger and rising threats:

"The arm of justice is chained by the law. We're not going to wait for this. We're going to amend the law to allow us to implement justice as soon as possible," Sisi said in a televised speech surrounded by Barakat's mourning relatives. "Do courts in these circumstances work? Do these laws work? They work with normal people," said Sisi, shaking a clenched fist for emphasis. Hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed since Morsi's ouster by militants based in the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula... At least 1,400 people, most of them Morsi supporters, have been killed in a police crackdown on protests. Meanwhile, thousands of people, mostly Islamists but also including secular dissidents, have been jailed and hundreds sentenced to death. Morsi himself has been sentenced to death... Outside the mosque where the funeral was held, a crowd of 50 protesters chanted: "The people demand the execution of the Muslim Brotherhood." Inside, Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zind, a recently appointed hardliner, told judges to avenge Barakat's killing. "The ball is now in the judges' court. Take your revenge using the law. Effective, swift law that doesn't take five years." Politicians and pro-Sisi media -- virtually all the channels and newspapers in Egypt -- have called for an even harsher crackdown on Morsi's Brotherhood and militants. ["Egypt's Sisi pledges tougher laws after prosecutor killing" | Agence France-Presse, June 30, 2015]

Instead, what they got today was one of the most dramatic of those Sinai days. It's an ongoing situation that is worrying at multiple levels. A brief Reuters report today ["Death toll in North Sinai militant attacks rises to 70: sources", July 01, 2015] summarizes the carnage.

Today's news reports suggest the Islamic "militant" terrorists mounted a cluster of simultaneous attacks on Egyptian army targets across the northern Sinai during the morning hours, producing a blood-bath.

Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, the ISIS affiliate in Egypt [click here for our previous posts about the havoc they have brought to the region] claimed responsibility for the attacks. Their version, not contradicted by anyone at this stage as far as we know, is that they hit some 15 army and police positions, and executed three human bomb attacks. Two of those targeted military checkpoints; one hit an officers' club in El-Arish.

A Times of Israel report says "the attackers on Wednesday used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades as well as assault rifles. Two of the checkpoints, which were apparently located in close proximity, were completely destroyed." Other reports say the terrorists succeeded in seizing Egyptian soldiers and are now holding them captive for what we presume will be barbaric purposes that have become sickeningly familiar. They also seized Egyptian army weapons and armoured vehicles.

Kerem Shalom Crossing: In April 2015, 523 laden trucks passed through
and crossed into the Gaza Strip each day, on average. It was shut down today
because of the nearby Arab-on-Arab carnage. [Image Source] 

Not surprisingly, the IDF has been "closely monitoring the border area with Egypt and Gaza in light of the events". Israel's Ministry of Defence took the decision some hours ago [source] to shut down Israel’s border crossing into the Gaza Strip and another into Egypt, with immediate effect:

Gates at the Kerem Shalom crossing were closed, cutting off the main conduit for goods transferred from Israel to Gaza by hundreds of trucks every day. In addition, the Nitzana border crossing, used by commercial traffic moving between Israel and Egypt via Sinai, was also closed. The Taba border crossing, used by pedestrian travelers visiting Egypt in the less-restive southern Sinai peninsula, was still open during the early afternoon. [Times of Israel, today]

Inside Egypt, there's considerable related violence underway this evening. Just in the past hour:

Egyptian security officials say special forces killed nine members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, including a former member of parliament, during a raid on a Cairo apartment... [source]

31-May-15: In Sinai, Islamist terrorists threaten Eilat and Hamas

Funeral procession in Sinai honors the lives of four dead jihadists, caught in
the act of firing rockets in the direction of Israel [Le Figaro, August 11, 2013]

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis ("Champions of Jerusalem", in Arabic) is the Islamist jihad group that has brought considerable misery in the past several years to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

They are in the news again this morning because the natural gas pipeline running from Egypt through the desert to both Israel and Jordan was blown up yet again in the early hours of this morning, Sunday. And as numerous news agencies (Associated Press, for instance) point out, that's a target they have openly attacked [see "26-Oct-14: The ongoing savagery just over the border" for instance] more than a dozen times already.

Security officials in Egypt say suspected Islamic militants have blown up a natural gas pipeline outside el-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai. The officials say authorities stopped the flow of the gas to extinguish the fire after the blast, which happened early Sunday morning. No group immediately claimed the attack. However, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or "Champions of Jerusalem," a jihadi group based in the Sinai Peninsula, has claimed responsibility for more than a dozen similar bombings and attacks on security forces. It pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group late last year... [AP, today]

The same terror organization has been mentioned this past week [here], issuing mortal threats against Hamas and the southern Israeli city of Eilat:

Jihadists in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State have threatened to strike the port of Eilat "in the coming days," according to reports in Egyptian media. The reports state the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), which changed its name to Welayat al-Sinai (Province of Sinai) "threatened to strike the Eilat Port, following coordination with Islamic State's wing in the Gaza Strip" ...Salafi groups began to surface in Gaza in 2006 and have had a tense relationship with Hamas, which seized the territory from forces loyal to the Western-backed Fatah group in 2007. The tensions between the two terrorist groups in the coastal enclave began on May 3, when Hamas destroyed a mosque belonging to a group known as the "Supporters of the Islamic State in Jerusalem." The group responded by threatening to kill Hamas members – publishing some of their names and photos - unless Hamas releases several men, including a local Salafi sheikh. In March, a senior IDF official said that Israel was "preparing for a multi-pronged terror threat directed against our forces and civilians in the Eilat area..." Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has spearheaded an insurgency in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula since the army overthrew Islamic president Mohammed Morsi.

Click here for some past posts about the terror raging in Egyptian Sinai.

13-Apr-15: The carnage resulting from Gaza's Hamas tunnels may now be sharply reduced

Children working on a Gaza tunnel construction site, from a National
Geographic report published in July 2014

As far as we can tell from Googling, no mainstream Western news source is reporting on the dramatic moves the Egyptians have just taken - a no-holds-barred assault on the Hamas-inspired Gaza attack-tunnels phenomenon. Not surprisingly, several Israeli sources are reporting on it. Here's one.

Egypt to sentence Gaza smugglers to life in prison | The Times of Israel April 13, 2015

A new amendment to Egypt’s penal code would sentence offenders convicted of digging and using cross-border tunnels connecting the country to the Gaza Strip to terms of up to life in prison, the Egyptian news agency MENA reported Sunday. The amendment, one of several passed by presidential decree, seeks to curtail the problem of tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, which have been used to smuggle contraband crucial for the Hamas rule in the Palestinian territory, as well as weapons and terror activists. Under the new amendment, the Egyptian government has the authority to confiscate buildings above the tunnels or any equipment used in their construction. Anyone with knowledge of cross-border tunnels who does not report them could be liable to the same life term as those who build and use them.

The victims of the tunnels industry are not only Israeli military personnel and civilians. Nor are they only Egyptian security people fighting the terrorist groups that have been active for years in the Sinai. In fact, the price paid by Palestinian children is one that has so far largely been kept under wraps.

A July 2014 Tablet Magazine report ["Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Tunnels"] describes the ruthless abuse by the Islamist ideologues of Hamas in exploiting child slave-laborers. Demonstrating the lethal hypocrisy of Iran's local Hamas surrogates in the Gaza Strip, those children were all Palestinian Arabs:

The Institute for Palestine Studies published a detailed report [here] on Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon in the summer of 2012. It reported that tunnel construction in Gaza has resulted in a large number of child deaths. The author, Nicolas Pelham, explains that Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, "much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies". Human rights groups operating in Gaza raised concerns about child labor in the tunnels as far back as 2008. Hamas responded by saying it was “considering curbs." ...Nor does it seem that Hamas paid much subsequent attention to ensuring the safety of the child workers that it used to build the tunnels that would wind up endangering the lives of many in Gaza. On a tour of the tunnels in 2011, Pelham noted that, “nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels.”

Now something does appear finally to have been done - not (of course) by the jihadists of Gaza but by the Egyptians on the other side of the border.

It's safe to assume that many lives that would otherwise be needlessly endangered, at least in those Gaza tunnels that run to and from Egypt and the Sinai, will be preserved as a result.

27-Oct-14: Palestinian Arab report says the Egyptians plan to keep the Gazans far away for now

Simpler times: A section of the Egypt/Gaza
border in 2009 [Image Source]

Here, unedited, is the full text of a Palestinian Arab news site's report on major changes announced by Egypt to address its perception of lethal challenges facing it from the Gazan side. It comes from Palestinian News Network, and went up in the past hour. There are some obvious problems with the report (like spelling, and the notion of a buffer zone that's nine miles high, which is 14 kilometers) but those are small details. We will add our own commentary later.

Egypt to build buffer zone on Gaza borders
Published on Monday, 27 October 2014 15:18
PNN/ Cairo

Egyptian authorities tody announced the decision to build buffer zone on its borders with Gaza, with the depth of 500 meters, and a height of 14 KM, to hinder terrorist groups from entering Sinai, that recently resulted in killing 33 Egyptian soldiers.

The buffer zone construction will result in displacing thousands of bedouins in the Sinai desert, that Egypt vowed to relocate and give compensations before beginning the construction.

The Egyptian soldiers were killed during an attack on a checkpoint on Friday in the Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel and Gaza. The assault bore the marks of attacks claimed by Egypt's most active militant group Ansar Bait al-Maqdis.

Egyptian president, Abdul Fattah Sissi, promised taking "many measures" in the border, that it is likely to be expanded in order to pursue militants and stop them from entering Egyptian land.

Sissi expected help from the US to stop "terror" in Egypt.

As a result of the attacks on Egyptian soldiers, the indirect negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli delegations, which were decided to take place last Monday,  have been postponed until the second half of November.

---
The people who put PNN together describe themselves as

a group of independent Palestinian journalists and editors who work on a strictly professional level without favoring one political party over another or any religion over another. We report from a Palestinian perspective as we see that the media is rife with Israeli sources.

Wikipedia says their efforts are part of

the charitable organization the Holy Land Trust and is based in Bethlehem...

26-Oct-14: The ongoing savagery just over the border

The entrances to smuggling tunnels (foreground) are seen on the border between Egypt
and the southern Gaza Strip, near Rafah August 8, 2012 (Photo: Reuters)

From The Independent (UK), October 25, 2014:

Two attacks in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula killed 33 security personnel, security sources said, in some of the worst anti-state violence since Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown last year... Thirty people were killed in the first attack in the al-Kharouba area northwest of al-Arish, near the Gaza Strip, the sources said. Military helicopters transferred the dead and wounded to Cairo. Among them were several senior officers from the Second Field Army based in Ismailia, security sources said. The car bomb attack targetted two armoured vehicles at a checkpoint near an army installation, the sources said. They said the big explosion and high death toll were likely due to the vehicles being loaded with ammunition and heavy weapons. Security officials gave conflicting accounts of the first attack, with one Sinai-based official saying a rocket-propelled grenade was used. More than 25 people were wounded. Hours later, gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint in al-Arish, killing three members of the security forces, officials said.

Wikipedia gives the context:

The Sinai peninsula has long been known for its lawlessness, having historically served as a smuggling route for weapons and supplies. Security provisions in the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty of 1979 have institutionalized a diminished security presence in the area, enabling militants to operate with a freer hand. Moreover, the limited government-directed investment and development in Sinai has discriminated against the local Bedouin population, a population that values tribal allegiance over all else. The combination of Sinai's harsh terrain and lack of resources have kept the area poor and hence ripe for militancy

And an update ["Curfew and state of emergency in North Sinai follows deadly attacks"] via Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian news site, from Saturday:

On Friday night, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued Presidential Decree No. 366 (2014), which stipulates that large swathes of North Sinai (including Arish and Sheikh Zuwayed) be placed under a three-month state of emergency, along with a curfew from 5 pm to 7 am each day, until further notice. Violations of the curfew are punishable by imprisonment...
In a statement to the newspaper, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb said, “The state will take strict measures to confront this dirty war,” adding, “lowly acts of terrorism will not keep us from realizing our political roadmap.”
Authorities also decreed the indefinite closure of the Rafah border crossing, the only legal access point into or out of Egypt from, the Gaza Strip as of Saturday. The exact reasoning behind this closure was not explained by Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or other state officials.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua said on Saturday:

The Gaza-based Corporation for Crossings and Borders said in an emailed press statement that Egyptian authorities have officially informed the Palestinian side on the closure of the main crossing for the coastal enclave. "Egypt informed us today morning that it shut down Rafah crossing until a further notice due to the deteriorated security situation in Sinai," said the statement.

Though these reports don't say it, most of the frequent bombing attacks on Egyptian security forces, on Egyptian public facilities, on Egyptian politicians and on the Egypt-to-Jordan gas pipeline have been ascribed to the Salafist jihadists of "Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the most active militant group in Egypt". Since 2011, its terrorists have also repeatedly fired rockets [source] into southern Israel, including the resort city of Eilat.

Friday's assault was "the biggest loss of life in decades for Egypt's army, which has been carrying out an offensive against jihadists in northern Sinai". The Egyptian campaign has involved their forces destroying (they claim)

more than 1,600 tunnels connecting the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, most of them since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year. The Islamist group Hamas, the main power in the blockaded Palestinian enclave, uses the tunnels to smuggle in arms, food and money. [AFP, September 20, 2014]

Egypt's Al-Ahram says the number of tunnels destroyed by Egypt is larger than that, and hints at Egypt's grievances against Hamas:

Egypt's military has destroyed a total of 1,813 smuggling tunnels in the Sinai Peninsula since January 2011, state news agency MENA reported. The network of smuggling tunnels connects the desert region with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamist Hamas movement. Egypt's army has been waging an offensive in North Sinai to counter a rising jihadist militancy that has left hundreds of police and army personnel dead in the last two years. The military has raided suspected sites and has routinely announced the killing or arrest of militants. Egypt has accused Hamas of interfering in its internal politics. Hamas has vehemently denied such accusations... Hamas is an ideological offshoot of Egypt's now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group, from which ousted president Mohamed Morsi hails. Relations between Egypt and Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 until recently, have been tense since Morsi's ouster in July, 2013. [Al-Ahram, October 9, 2014]

Here in Israel, there are some less sanguine opinions about the effectiveness of Egyptian efforts to shut down those Sinai-Gaza tunnels:

For their part, the Bedouin smugglers acknowledge that the Egyptian crackdown has forced them to think smaller. The massive tunnels that used to accommodate cars and trucks have been destroyed, but many of the one- to two-meter-wide corridors have survived. One Bedouin guide told Reuters that smugglers had built up to 200 more such tunnels in the last two years, bringing the total of working tunnels up to 500. Comparatively, before the crackdown, there were some 1,500... ["Smuggling between Sinai and Gaza still thriving", Times of Israel, August 22, 2014]

15-Mar-14: Terror and safety in the work-place

Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, one of the most lethal of the currently-active Egyptian terror groups, and the main source of terrorist activities in the increasingly chaotic Sinai peninsula, has just announced the termination of the career of one of its founders.

According to AFP quoting the terrorist group, Tawfiq Mohamed Fareej died last week when a bomb he was transporting in his car exploded prematurely when the vehicle was involved in a traffic accident. They are now saying Fareej was in charge of the bloody cross-border terrorist attack on southern Israel on August 18, 2011 that killed 8 Israelis. Eight Israelis, six of them civilians and two security force personnel, died in that attack. [See our report: "19-Aug-11: Summarizing the events of Thursday"] 

Fareej was probably also involved in a string of sabotage attacks on the Egypt-to-Israel gas pipeline, a failed assassination attempt on the life of Egyptian interior minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, on September 6, 2013, and the bombing of an Egyptian police building [see our report "26-Jan-14: Sinai's terror problems are now Cairo's nightmares"]. 

Among other recent 'work accidents' involving jihadists and Islamists:

• Yesterday (March 14, 2014): An intending car bomber in Somalia, thought to be part of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab jihadist organization, accidentally detonated his explosives prematurely while attempting a terror attack on a hotel in the capital, Mogadishu. No one else was killed or injured in the failed murder attempt. [Source: AP/Washington Post]
• March 11, 2014: Four Palestinians were killed on Tuesday in a house explosion in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, in what local officials have termed a work accident. Hamas reported on its website that the four were activists in its Izz a-Din Al-Qassam military wing, and said that their bodies were transferred to a hospital in Gaza. According to reports, the blast came from inside the house and was not the result of any external rocket or explosives [Source: Haaretz, "Four killed in Gaza, apparently while making bomb"].
• March 9, 2014: The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades division of Hamas mourned the untimely death in Rafah (Gaza) of one of its "field commanders", Ibrahim al-Ghoul, and injuries to nine others as a result of a mishap during a training session on building bombs. The English-language Alqassam website termed the death an act of martyrdom that followed "a long bright path of jihad, hard work, struggle and sacrifice.” Gaza's Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, quoted by the Maan News Agency and via a spokesperson, said the injuries to the other bomb-making cadets were "serious".
• February 10, 2014: No fewer than 22 Iraqi "militants" (the misleading name given in the UPI and New York Times reports to religiously-inspired persons engaging full-time in terrorism) from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terror group, went to their heavenly virgins when a lesson on making car bombs and explosive belts went catastrophically wrong as a result of a "fumble". Associated Press said “a glitch set off one of the devices”.
• February 10, 2014: In another part of Iraq, more or less on the same day, 25 other terrorists died in a truck-bomb explosion in Salahudin province. Xinhua, the Chinese newsagency, said they "were building the bomb when it exploded Sunday in a village near Samarra". Several more were injured. [UPI]

Not often we are privileged to see accidents as the cause for untold numbers of lives being saved.

16-Feb-14: As the Sinai turmoil escalates, Israel-bound tour bus explodes in terror attack

The Taba Hilton Hotel [Image Source: Wikipedia]

The jihadist chaos and carnage that plague Egypt's Sinai Peninsula exacted fresh lives this afternoon. 

A tour bus carrying some 32 Korean Christian pilgrims, having started its journey in Cairo, passed through the ancient Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine in central Sinai (we know it better in Israel as Santa Katarina) and then the coastal town of Nuweiba and was on its way to Eilat when an on-board bomb exploded just before the travelers reached Taba and the border crossover point to Israel. (Reuters has video footage.)

According to Times of Israel - 

Initial investigation indicated that the bomb was planted under the driver’s seat of the tourist bus... The bomb was detonated by remote control, as the bus waited near the Taba Hilton hotel to obtain permission to cross into Israel. Security arrangements at the crossing are such that the terrorists would not have been able to carry out the attack at the Israeli side of the border or inside Israel, security sources said Sunday night without elaboration.

The destroyed tour bus [Image Source]

In the minutes after the explosion, the Israeli news media showed photos of a long line of Magen David Adom ambulances waiting on Israel's side of the border. Now we know that there were some two dozen of them, but their services were rebuffed. As the Times of Israel reported

Egypt refused Israeli offers of medical assistance for the tourists... Three Korean tourists and the Egyptian bus driver were killed in the bombing, and at least eight passengers were seriously injured. The bomb was placed under the driver’s seat and detonated by remote control as the vehicle neared the crossing into Israel.

Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, a terrorist organization said to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, took credit right away. These are the same Salafi jihadists who have already "conducted dozens of attacks in North Sinai, as well as a handful in the Egyptian mainland" ["The Strategy of Egypt's Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis", David Barnet, February 10, 2014] and claimed to be behind the rocket attacks on the Israeli resort city of Eilat two weeks ago. There's little reason to expect the mayhem they are causing to come to an end soon, even as the Egyptian military's counter-terrorism measures remain in full force. 


Nor is there much reason to expect certain mainstream news channels to use the word "terror" in its coverage of the death and destruction the terrorists sow. The closest they get in tonight's BBC report ["Sinai attacks: Deadly bombing hits Egypt tour bus"] of the lethal Taba attack is in their repeated resort to the word "militants". The story's more or less the same at the New York Times ["Bombing of Tourist Bus Kills at Least Three in Sinai"].

Israeli emergency vehicles and crews lined up at border, but
Egyptian authoritiss refused to allow them in [Image Source]

At The Guardian, they're considerably less coy. An analytic piece there, "Egypt faces new threat in al-Qaida-linked group Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis" two weeks ago says the Sinai jihadist group

displays an affinity for al-Qaida, and the proficiency of its attacks suggest some level of external training. But until Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaida's leader, mentioned "our people in the Sinai" in an audio message on 24 January, there had been no confirmation that al-Qaida recognised Sinai jihadists. "It really caught my attention," said Barnett. "It supports the view that there are foreign fighters in the Sinai, and it's a message from al-Qaida that your cause is being recognised by us and foreigners are likely coming to aid you."

We wonder how South Korea's public opinion is dealing with the way its victims could have been treated by some of the most experienced and effective first responders anywhere... but weren't because of the decision by the Egyptian authorities to prevent Israeli ambulances and crews,  ready at the border within minutes of the terror attack, from crossing into Egypt. No doubt there will be some lofty political explanations, but the families of seriously injured loved ones now being transported to who-knows-which desert town clinics might not find them terribly persuasive.

1-Feb-14: Friday night rocket attack on Eilat

Eilat's north beach area [Image Source]

With the Sabbath just ended, we wish a Good Week (Shavua Tov) to all, and renewed prayers for a week of more good sense and fewer opportunities for the crazies and the jihadists.

Israel's cutting-edge Iron Dome defense system intercepted a rocket heading for Eilat around 9:30 on Friday night, the Jewish Sabbath. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit, quoted by Ynet, says the Tzeva Adom ("Color Red") incoming missile alert siren was heard throughout Israel's southern-most city after security forces detected an Israel-bound launch in the Sinai Peninsula. A Jerusalem Post report says there was a mid-air intercept by the Israeli system and two separate explosions were heard on the ground. A remarkably laconic Reuters report from Friday night echoes the part about the terrorist rocket being stopped.

Tonight, there's a report that the Salafi terrorists of Ansar Bait al-Maqdis have claimed credit for the thwarted attack. AFP reported that the jihadists, who executed the same sort of attack in the same area on January 20, 2014 [see "21-Jan-14: Eilat under rocket attack tonight"], "threatened to follow Friday's foiled rocket fire with further attacks". Untroubled by the need to adopt Western-style pretence at painting their evil in quasi-political language, the Ansar statement quoted by AFP says in blunt terrorist terms:

"Jews, you have to know that nothing will stop us from fighting you, even if the entire world's armies move on your instructions. If they create a barrier between us and you, with God's help and strength, we will get you and kill you."

These are the same people who are behind the mass attacks on Egyptians that we looked at here last week: 26-Jan-14: Sinai's terror problems are now Cairo's nightmares. 

There's more in-depth coverage of those terrorists from David Barnett on the Threat Matrix/Long War Journal site where he follows Ansar's activities closely.

And a slightly bizarre background note to the mid-air intercept aspect of this report. On Thursday, a day before this latest rocket attack on Eilat, that same Iron Dome installation was the target of a strange assault. According to Israel National News, an Arab male ran at the soldier guarding the anti-missile battery, screaming “Allahu Akbar” (“G-d is great” in Arabic).

Fearing a terrorist attack, the soldiers shot at the man’s legs in order to stop him. The man was hit and injured. He was taken to Eilat’s Yoseftal Hospital. It is not yet clear whether the man is armed and was attempting a terrorist attack, or is mentally ill. [Israel National News]

26-Jan-14: Sinai's terror problems are now Cairo's nightmares

Police inspect bomb crater after attack on
Cairo Security Directorate building,
downtown Cairo, Friday [Image Source: Reuters]

For the past few years, we have devoted dozens of posts here to the rise of terror in the Sinai peninsula and what this might mean for Israel's security.

Things have gotten better in some ways and worse in others during the past few months. The authorities in Cairo have committed significant forces to the area to reimpose a degree of order, including shutting down many of the tunnels that deliver goods into and out of Gaza, but that also provide Gaza's terror forces with armaments and facilitate interaction among the jihad-mind Islamists on both sides of the Egypt/Gaza border. And there has been a scaling up of the terrorist presence not only in Sinai itself but now - after the overthrow of the Morsi/Moslem Brotherhood regime - in the cities of Egypt.

This past Friday was a very bad day for the Egyptians. An analysis by David Barnett that appears today on the website The National Interest ["Can Egypt Handle Ansar Bait al Maqdis?"], provides a penetrating overview. Barnett is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Salafi jihadists in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Some extracts:

• "Shortly after 6:30am in Egypt on Friday, a massive car bomb detonated outside the Cairo Security Directorate. The attack killed at least four people and wounded more than 70, Egypt’s Health Ministry said. 
• "In the hours that followed at least three additional explosions were reported in the Cairo area with reports of two more fatalities and scores wounded.
• "In the immediate aftermath of the first attack, some Egypt observers, myself included, said the car bombing was likely the work of the Sinai-based jihadist group Ansar Bait al Maqdis (ABM). In a statement released to jihadist forums Friday night, ABM claimed responsibility for all of the attacks...
• "With crowds calling for the Muslim Brotherhood’s “execution" after Friday’s attack... it makes sense politically for the government to blame supporters of fallen Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi, who continue to partake in efforts to delegitimize the new regime. This is why Cairo, which believes it is in an existential battle, declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization shortly after the Mansoura bombing [we reported on that here: "24-Dec-13: Violent chaos in Egypt escalates to more chaotic and considerably more violent"].
• "Cairo’s current approach, in other words, may not be properly addressing the serious jihadist threat to Egypt that was once clearly limited to the Sinai Peninsula, but has now reached across the Suez Canal. Recent admissions by Egyptian officials indicate that Sinai jihadists have been avoiding security sweeps and reaching the Nile Delta and Cairo, among other locations. This, along with Friday’s attacks, raises serious questions as to whether enough resources are being deployed to deal with Egypt’s growing jihadist problem, particularly as these forces display an ability to adapt to ongoing Egyptian military operations.

In the hours since the article appeared, events in Sinai have heated up still further.

• Twenty-nine people were killed during anti-government marches on Saturday [Reuters], three years to the day after President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. 
• An Egyptian military helicopter has crashed and its crew is missing in the northern Sinai Peninsula where its forces are battling Islamic militants. This happened near the Sinai village of el-Kharouba. 
• And in the city of Suez, a car bomb exploded outside a Central Security Forces (CSF) camp, also on Saturday [Al Ahram's Online website], injuring 16 people and underscoring the sense that events are spinning out of control.

21-Jan-14: Eilat under rocket attack tonight

There has been a rocket attack on the Israeli resort city of Eilat tonight (Monday).

AFP is reporting that "at least one rocket struck the outskirts" of Eilat; authorities found their remains on the city's outskirts. Searches are continuing for signs of more rockets. Residents reported hearing several explosions during the evening, but at this stage (it's just after midnight) both the Israel Police and the IDF are still unable to confirm that there was rocket fire. At various points in the past five hours, it was suggested that rockets had crashed to earth near one of Eilat's best-known hotels; those reports are almost certainly wrong and may simply reflect the reality that people hearing sudden loud explosions are not always well-placed to judge how close the source of the noise is.

Over at Haaretz, they say that what was heard in Eilat was a series of explosions, indicating incoming rockets from the Sinai Peninsula. The blasts were around 7:00 pm, Monday. A police search will get underway at dawn.

Times of Israel says there were two GRAD rockets and that they struck an open area close to the city. (GRADs have been deployed by Sinai-based terrorists in their attacks on Eilat in the past - in April 2013 for instance.) Egyptian military forces are carrying out anti-terrorism operations in the north of the Sinai peninsula - with Israel’s blessing, according to a military source referenced in the Times of Israel piece tonight.

UPDATE Tuesday January 21, 2014: Credit for the attack on Eilat has been claimed by the terror group Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, which Times of Israel describes as having close ties to Egypt’s Salafi movement. Their motivations are not so complicated: "Our war with the enemy in Egypt will not distract us from the war with the nation’s first enemy, Israel. With Allah’s help, from us the Jews will see only injury.”

24-Dec-13: Violent chaos in Egypt escalates to more chaotic and considerably more violent

From CNN's coverage

We keep hearing about how Israeli actions are what keep the Middle East turmoil going. But the hour-by-hour Syrian carnage and the ongoing pan-Arab repression of minorities are among a host of factors reminding us how untrue and self-serving that simplistic view of a complex situation is.

An Associated Press report yesterday (Monday) pointed to the steady rise of terrorist rhetoric and violence in Egypt, and in particular at threats made by a group with Palestinian Arab ties against Egypt's post-Moslem Brotherhood government.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or the Champions of Jerusalem, said it considers Egyptian troops to be infidels because they answer to the secular-leaning military-backed government. The group and others based in the Sinai have been blamed for a surge of attacks against the security forces since a July coup toppled the country's former Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi. In reaction, Egypt's armed forces launched a military offensive in the Northern Sinai province in August, going after suspected militants in the region. Speaking at a public forum Monday, the military spokesman Ahmed Mohammed Ali said so far the operations have resulted in the killing of 184 militants and the arrest of 803 others. He said about 25 percent of those killed and arrested are foreign fighters, but didn't provide further details. The group is believed to have ties with Palestinian militants in the neighboring Gaza Strip and officials have said other foreign militants have found refuge in Sinai during the ongoing turmoil. [AP]

The terrorists of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis have mostly been in the news owing to the wave of terror attacks they have instigated in Egypt's volatile Sinai Peninsula. AP quotes Egypt's army saying that since August it has killed 184 terrorists in North Sinai, where near-daily attacks have been carried out against security forces. We have been writing regularly in this blog about the spiral downwards into murderous chaos that has infected the Sinai in the past two years.

Now those jihadists have raised the stakes, calling in a statement yesterday (Monday) on the country's army and police to desert. Otherwise, it said, security officials will face death at the hands of the terrorists.

Early today (Tuesday), they delivered on the threat. Egypt is in a state of shock as it sees the Islamist terrorists strike viciously beyond the confines of the troubled Sinai. From AFP in the early hours of this morning:

A powerful blast at a police headquarters in the Egyptian city of Mansoura early Tuesday killed at least eight people and wounded 90 others, officials said. Egyptian security sources said the explosion in the city, north of Cairo, was massive and a part of the building had caved in... The impact of the explosion was felt around 20 kilometres (12 miles) away and shattered windows of nearby buildings, the security sources said. [AFP]

Al Ahram says the police headquarters bombing, around 1:00 am today, has risen to at least 14 lives and injured 130. Some reports [for instance, Telegraph UK] say that the Egyptian prime minister

"has declared the Muslim Brotherhood movement a "terrorist" group, after a car bomb ripped through a police building and killed at least 14 people. Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi's condemnation of the group comes just weeks ahead of a referendum on a new constitution that is billed as the first major step toward democracy since the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi in July... An Egyptian court has already banned the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Morsi belongs, while the interim military-installed authorities have often accused the group of funding and training militants in the restive Sinai Peninsula."

At Aljazeera, they say there will be an Egyptian cabinet meeting later this morning to consider formalizing the Moslem Brotherhood ban.