Palestinian militants involved in Sinai attacks: Egyptian official
Interior Ministry source says domestic militants lack training on weapons
used in last week's attacks
Mohamed Hassan Shaban Asharq Al-Awsat Sunday, 26 Oct, 2014
http://www.aawsat.net/2014/10/article55337916

Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat—Friday’s attacks on army posts in the northern part
of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula were carried out by Palestinian militants, a
senior Interior Ministry official told Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday, at the
same time that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi told Egyptians in a televised
address that “foreign forces” were responsible for the attacks.

Maj. Gen. Sameeh Beshadi, who was formerly in charge of security in the
North Sinai governorate where the attacks took place, said there was “no
doubt that Palestinian elements had taken part in the attacks,” which killed
at least 30 soldiers, according to security and medical officials.

He said the assailants had entered Sinai via the tunnels linking the region
with the Palestinian territories, and that the assailants had prepared the
booby-trapped vehicle which Egyptian authorities say was used to carry out
one of the attacks while inside Egyptian territory.

According to Egyptian officials, of the two attacks Friday, the first
involved a booby-trapped vehicle being rammed into an army checkpoint close
to the border town of El-Arish, while a second attack involved the use of
mortars and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) against another checkpoint to
the south.

Beshadi said the use of RPGs and mortars in the second attack proved the
assailants were not local to the area. “The terrorists we are dealing with
in North Sinai do not possess the necessary knowhow to fire mortar rounds,
nor do they have the ability to use RPGs, in the way that we saw in the
complex attack that occurred on Friday,” he maintained.

This comes as President Sisi warned on Saturday that “foreign hands” were
behind the attacks, though he did not specify who exactly was responsible.

Beshadi said it could take as little as little as 15 minutes to cross via
vehicle from the Gaza Strip to the area where the attacks were carried out,
some 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the west of the border.

“All the big terrorist operations which have taken place in North Sinai in
the last few years involved well-trained Palestinian elements, including the
attack on the military helicopter at the beginning of this year,” Beshadi
said, referring to an attack which took place mid-January in the Kharouba
area in North Sinai and which killed five soldiers.

The establishment of a safe zone in the border areas between Egypt and the
Gaza Strip was now “the only solution” that would be able to halt the
attacks on Egyptian soldiers stationed in the Sinai, Beshadi said, adding
that this would not come at the expense of local residents.

Beshadi said a number of Sinai residents had been rehoused in other areas
and had been fairly compensated for any losses incurred as a result.

In recent months a number of people living in North Sinai have been
relocated by the Egyptian Army due to fighting between the army and Islamist
militants, most prominently from the Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis group, which has
claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on military and security
personnel in the Sinai and in other areas of the country, including Cairo.

Beshadi said the Suez Canal area was safe, adding that extra reinforcements
had been sent to the “Suez Canal governorates” of Suez, Ismailia and Port
Said to boost security in the area, where work is also currently underway to
construct a second parallel canal to the existing one.

Militants in the Sinai Peninsula have upped their attacks against Egyptian
forces in the region since the military deposed Islamist president Mohamed
Mursi last July. There have been allegations in the Egyptian media that
Mursi—a Muslim Brotherhood member currently on trial for conspiring with
foreign organizations and groups such as Hamas—allowed the entry of armed
elements from Gaza into Egypt during his one-year stint in power.