Jihadists simultaneously attacked over a dozen army and police targets in northern Sinai on Thursday night, killing at least 26 people, including civilians. More than 100 were reported wounded. Several checkpoints, a police club, a hotel, and a military base were targeted in the cities of el-Arish, Sheikh Zuwayid, and Rafah. The attackers reportedly fired mortars and set off at least one car bomb. Egyptian officials indicated that the death toll was expected to rise.
Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has long been a haven for jihadists and militants, including Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which pledged loyalty to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) last November. Analysts at the Brookings Institution have called the region “a fertile environment for Islamist militants to thrive, effectively rendering the Sinai Peninsula a new front in a region rife with conflict.”
The Egyptian military has been fighting a growing insurgency in northern Sinai since the fall of Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, announcing a full-scale assault in September 2013. Militants launched major attacks against security checkpoints last October. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis reportedly planted nearly two dozen bombs in northern Sinai throughout November 2014, killing four men.
In recent months, the Egyptian government has begun a policy of systematically demolishing houses in Rafah, which straddles the border with the Gaza Strip, to crack down on the flow of weapons and terrorists across the border. The intention is to create a buffer zone, which has widened from 500 yards to more than a half mile, and Rafah’s governor hinted that the entire city might be torn down.
In an interview with France24, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said that Egypt will not allow Sinai to “become a base for attacks against Israel.” Under Sisi’s leadership, security coordination and collaboration between Israel and Egypt has greatly increased as the two countries share the common interest of defeating Islamist terror. Israel has allowed Egypt to keep a far larger force in Sinai than what is allowed under the Camp David Accords in order to facilitate Egypt’s efforts to fight terrorism in the often lawless territory.
[Photo: Conflict Studies / YouTube ]