Egypt's Military Gains against Islamist Militants in the Sinai

Col. Ahmed Ali, a spokesman for the Egyptian military, 

appeared at a news conference in Cairo on Sunday.

A spokesman for the Egyptian military said on Sunday that it had taken the upper hand in a two-month-old campaign to rid Sinai of Islamist militants, repairing a “security collapse” after the revolution of January 2011. 

“The last week included a decisive confrontation with elements that threaten national security,” the spokesman, Col. Ahmed Ali, said in a televised news conference to discuss the continuing campaign.

[...] 

Colonel Ali said that in the past two weeks, the “military forces started taking action against terrorists instead of merely reacting to terrorist attacks” and attained “our highest rates for successfully achieving our targets.” 

He said the military had detained 309 “terrorists,” including 36 in July, 140 in August and 33 in September. The military had stormed 601 houses, seized 7 weapons store houses, confiscated 203 vehicles and captured 10 tons of explosives, he said.

Colonel Ali also pointed fingers at Hamas, the militant Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that controls Gaza, signaling a renewed chill in Egyptian relations with Hamas after a period of warming under Mr. Morsi. Colonel Ali suggested several times that some of the militants in the Egyptian Sinai had ties to Hamas or the Palestinians, including reporting that the army had seized grenades and other equipment stamped with “Qassam Battalions,” the name of Hamas’s military wing. 

At one Sinai checkpoint, he said, the army found explosives connected by wires to a detonator across the border in Gaza. And he showed footage of some of the army’s accused “terrorist” captives. In short video clips shown on state television, several described themselves as Palestinian. (In a response on its Web site, Hamas said it had no activity or role inside Egypt.)

The army has now destroyed more than 150 tunnels used for smuggling to and from Gaza, Colonel Ali said. It appeared to be a continuation of an on-again, off-again military campaign begun under Mr. Morsi, when the army also sought to shut down the tunnels and filled some with sewage. 

The military’s reports, however, are difficult to confirm independently, in part because the military has sought to close off certain areas of Sinai to journalists.

Read the full story HERE.

Related Story: Egypt secures Gaza border as part of Sinai crackdown

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