CAIRO: Egypt said on Wednesday that "Palestinian factions" were behind this week’s rocket attacks on Israel and Jordan, the MENA news agency reported, apparently implying the rockets were fired from the Sinai peninsula.
"An official Egyptian source said Palestinian factions from the Gaza Strip were behind the launch of five rockets on Aqaba and Eilat on Monday," MENA reported.
"Egypt will never, under any circumstances, tolerate the use of its lands by any party to harm the country’s interests," the agency quoted the source as saying.
On Tuesday, Egypt launched a wide security sweep of Sinai, after a senior Jordanian official said his country had proof the deadly rocket that struck the port town of Aqaba had been fired from Sinai.
"Following the Jordanian comments, Egypt has launched a wide security sweep of the Sinai peninsula," an Egyptian official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
But he insisted "there are no organized groups operating in Sinai and security on the peninsula is extremely tight. Any suspicious activity would have been detected," he said.
South Sinai Governor Abdel Fadil Shusha said it was "technically impossible" for the rockets to have come from Sinai due to the mountainous nature of the peninsula.
At least five blasts were heard on Monday, with one rocket exploding in open ground outside the Israeli resort of Eilat, two crashing into the Red Sea and the rest hitting Jordan, killing one person there.
