Egypt seals border town in pursuit of jihadist terrorists
Gunmen kill at least 15 Egyptian police officers at border checkpoint, commandeer armored vehicles and charge toward border crossing into Israel • One vehicle explodes at the crossing, second vehicle destroyed by Israeli aircraft • Terrorists fleeing from vehicles killed.
Lilach Shoval, Gadi Golan and News Agencies
One of the hijacked Egyptian vehicles burns after trying to storm the Kerem Shalom border crossing with explosives.
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Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
IDF chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz (front left) with OC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Tal Russo (second from right) at the site of the attack.
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Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
One of the machine guns the terrorists carried on their botched effort to attack Israel.
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Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
Some of the arms captured by Israeli forces after thwarting the terrorists' attempt to storm the Israeli border crossing.
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Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
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Egyptian army helicopters, with the help of army rangers,
were attempting to apprehend suspects in the attack that killed at least 15
Egyptian police officers in Sunday’s border attack, an Egyptian security source
reported Monday. The attack was the deadliest such event Egypt's tense Sinai
border region has seen in decades.
On Sunday, jihadist terrorists took control over an
Egyptian checkpoint, killing at least 15 policemen and injuring at least seven,
and commandeered two Egyptian armored vehicles with which they charged toward
the border crossing with Israel. The vehicles were destroyed and the terrorists
killed as they attempted to infiltrate the Israeli border.
The Egyptian
source, speaking to Ahram Online, said that early on Monday army units
surrounded the city of Rafah, on the Egyptian side of the Egypt-Gaza border, to
prevent suspects from escaping.
A television journalist in the northern Sinai said the
area had been sealed off by security forces, who blocked the road from the main
town of Arish in the direction of the Gaza border crossing at Rafah. Egyptian
state television reported that the Rafah border crossing would be sealed
indefinitely.
Quoting Egyptian media sources, Israel Radio reported that
the death toll had reached 17.
On Sunday, operating on intelligence provided by the
Israel Security Agency (the Shin Bet), the Israel Defense Forces killed the
terrorists who had entered Israel, while sustaining no Israeli casualties.
According to Israeli intelligence officials, the attack was orchestrated by a
Salafi organization. Israeli intelligence services had reports of an impending
attack from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and were able to thwart the assault.
"We were prepared for it, so there was a hit," IDF
Spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said.
Egyptian security had reportedly ignored Israeli warnings
of an impending attack. Last week, an Egyptian security source accused Israeli
travel agencies of being behind Israeli authorities’ warnings to Israeli
tourists in Sinai, urging them to leave.
“It has become common in Israel for travel agencies to
spread these rumors to keep Israeli tourists inside Israel instead of going to
Sinai, which causes losses for these agencies,” the source told the German news
agency DPA last Friday.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that Israeli
forces had killed a total of eight terrorists during the operation. In a
statement, he said the IDF and Shin Bet had "thwarted an attack that could have
injured many. The terrorists' attack methods again raise the need for determined
Egyptian action to enforce security and prevent terror in the Sinai."
The terrorists were armed with explosives belts, guns,
bombs and other weapons, and were apparently planning a large demonstration of
power, the initial investigation into the incident suggested.
"Considering the explosives that the terrorists brought in the small
vehicle that exploded at the start, and the explosives belts fitted on six or
eight terrorists inside that armored vehicle, there is no doubt that their entry
into an Israeli town or a military base by surprise could have incurred
extensive damage," Barak said.
The incident began around 8 p.m., when Israeli soldiers
heard shooting coming from the Philadelphi Route, a narrow strip of land
situated along the border between Gaza and Egypt. Five minutes later, Sinai
terrorists took control over an Egyptian checkpoint, killing at least 15
uniformed officers and commandeering the armored vehicles. The vehicles then
charged toward the border, firing in all directions.
Around 8:10 p.m., one of the armored vehicles exploded at
the border crossing, blowing a hole through the fence that allowed the other
vehicle to cross into Israel. However, the second vehicle was quickly targeted
from the air by waiting Israel Air Force aircraft, and was destroyed. Several
terrorists were identified trying to flee from the burning vehicles, but they,
too, were killed.
IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, together
with GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Tal Russo and Gaza Division Commander Brig.
Gen. Yossi Bachar, toured the area of the Kerem Shalom border crossing, where
the commandeered vehicles were destroyed on Sunday. During their tour, they
spoke with the soldiers who pursued the terrorists who entered Israeli
territory.
“Even before investigations of the attack are complete, I
estimate that a terrible tragedy was avoided, an extremely complex attack by
terrorists operating between Sinai and the Gaza Strip," Gantz said to the
troops. "This was an extremely successful joint operation of the IAF and Armored
Corps. The speed of the cooperation between the various forces enabled us to
thwart a terror attack within 15 minutes, according to the assessments. I would
like to express my appreciation for the troops' vigilance, specifically that of
the intelligence personnel, and the determination of the soldiers operating in
the field.”
Russo echoed Gantz's sentiments, telling the soldiers,
“Forces operated at every location through which the vehicle was trying to
infiltrate. There were many clashes before the vehicle was destroyed, and the
entire time it was tracked and surrounded by IAF and Armored Corps forces along
with regional infantry soldiers. The vehicle was destroyed from the air as well
as from the ground. The terrorists who attempted to fire at the soldiers even
after the vehicle was destroyed were targeted as well. The operation featured
great cooperation between the forces.”
Meanwhile, however, an initial investigation into the
incident revealed that the second vehicle had penetrated a full 2 kilometers
into Israeli territory before it was destroyed, and that military troops had
pursued the vehicle at high speed, complete with gunfire, on a civilian road
alongside civilian vehicles.
The Walla! news website quoted a platoon commander
involved in the pursuit as saying that "the armored vehicle was traveling very
fast while I was behind it ... After we determined that it was in fact the
Egyptian vehicle, we opened fire and destroyed it. My big fear was that while we
were traveling and shooting we would hit civilians, since we were traveling on
an entirely civilian road where tanks are not a common occurrence."
Gantz held an emergency situation assessment meeting,
convening the relevant officers at the general staff headquarters. Several major
roads in the region were closed and large IDF forces were summoned to the area.
The soldiers combed the area thoroughly to ensure that no terrorists were still
at large inside Israel.
IDF Spokesman Mordechai issued a statement after the
event, saying, "This was a very serious incident that we will have to study."
"The Egyptian army was not involved in this incident,"
Mordechai said. "We are maintaining a high level of cooperation with the
Egyptian authorities. The event was the product of terror infrastructure based
in Sinai, and we were ready for it. There is still concern over an additional
attack, similar to the one carried out two months ago by the Global Jihad
[movement]. We have no knowledge of any terrorists in the area, but we are
continuing to comb the region."
The attack was an early diplomatic test for Egyptian
President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who assumed office at the end of June
after staunch U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year in a popular
uprising.
The attack may also complicate Egypt's relations with
Hamas, the Islamist party that rules the Gaza Strip and is close to Morsi's
Muslim Brotherhood, if it emerges that Palestinian gunmen were involved.
Earlier on Sunday, an Israeli air strike killed a
Palestinian gunman from a radical Islamist group and wounded another as they
rode a motorbike in southern Gaza near the Egyptian border. A military official
said that there was no correlation between the two events.
Egyptian and Israeli officials have been warning of a
deteriorating security situation in Sinai, where militants have taken advantage
of a security vacuum in the area following the uprising that toppled Mubarak
last year.
In a statement posted on the website of Gaza's Hamas
leaders, Hamas condemned "the ugly crime committed today against the Egyptian
soldiers, and sent its condolences to the families of the victims, to Egypt's
president and to his government."
Since Mubarak stepped down, Israel has allowed Egypt to
send in more troops to Sinai, which has been mostly demilitarized according to
the 1979 peace deal between the two countries. The Sunday attack spurred renewed
calls in Egypt to amend the treaty to allow for more troops in Sinai.
A similar attack took place a year ago, when Palestinian
militants crossed from Gaza into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, made their way along
the Israel-Egypt border, crossed back into Israel, attacked Israeli vehicles and
killed eight people. Israeli forces killed six Egyptians soldiers as they chased
the militants, increasing tension between the two countries.
Relations between the two nations have always been cool. Since Mubarak was
overthrown and Islamist parties moved to the front of the Egyptian political
scene, Israeli officials have expressed concern about the possibility of
deterioration in relations, while insisting that maintaining the peace treaty is
in the interest of both countries.
