CAIRO/Al-Arish: Joint army and police forces continued for the fourth consecutive day chasing suspects who allegedly carried out a series of attacks in North Sinai, provincial police directorate chief General Saleh El-Masry told Daily News Egypt on Thursday.
Saleh did not rule out the possibility that the suspects, who he said mainly belong to extremist Islamist groups, fled to the Sinai mountains where it is hard for security forces to hunt them down.
An interior ministry statement said that during the early hours of Wednesday, the forces arrested in the capital city of Al-Arish two men suspected of belonging to Jihadi militant groups inside a factory for producing explosives.
Investigations had earlier indicated they were part of the group that conducted several attacks in Al-Arish in July, the statement added.
The forces seized large amounts of guns, ammunition and explosive materials in the two suspects’ possession.
The two suspects confessed during interrogation that the seized weapons and explosives were theirs and that one of them ran the factory, the ministry said.
A total of 24 suspects had been detained over the past three days, in addition to seized weapons and explosives.
Last week, hundreds of army and police forces in armored vehicles and tanks were deployed in and around North Sinia, around vital buildings in the province and across the border with the blockaded Gaza Strip. At that time, there was no official confirmation as to their actual security task in the area.
On Monday, Israeli public radio said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approved Egypt’s request to increase the number of troops in the Sinai to "restore order" in the region.
The Egyptian military forces deployed in the peninsula are limited as per the terms of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
National security advisor in the province general Sherif Ismail previously told Daily News Egypt the forces currently deployed in North Sinai will reopen the police stations in the towns of Rafah and Sheikh Zewaid previously closed by the residents during the Jan. 25 uprising.
On July 29, dozens of armed men attacked a police station in Al-Arish and exchanged fire with security forces. The attack resulted in the death of one police officer, one army officer and a low-ranking policeman. Twelve police officers and 10 civilians were also injured in the crossfire.
Clashes continued until the early hours of July 30, before unidentified gunmen attacked, for the fifth time since February, a natural gas pipeline located about 15 kilometers from Al-Arish. The pipeline delivers gas to Israel and Jordan.
A few days after the July attacks, a group naming itself the El-Qaeda Network in Sinai Peninsula, released a statement that demanded the province be turned into an Islamic Caliphate. The group urged the Egyptian army to breach the Camp David Peace Accords and interfere to end the siege on Gaza. – Additional reporting by Hatem El-Buluk from Al-Arish.
