Gunmen attack Egyptian police station in Sinai
Two dead, six wounded in Islamist terrorist raid on security post near Gaza border
Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.
Islamist gunmen attacked a police station in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula early Wednesday morning, killing two and injuring six in the latest flare-up of violence in the increasingly chaotic border region.
According to Reuters, the attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades and firearms at the building, but AFP said mortars and machine guns struck the Central Security Forces outpost. It was not clear whether the casualties in the attack were military personnel.
Other simultaneous attacks reportedly took place at nearby security checkpoints.
The attack outside the city of Rafah, which borders the Gaza Strip, was the latest in a series of strikes believed to have been carried out by Islamist terrorist groups in the lawless territory since last week’s military coup in Cairo.
Gunmen shot and killed an Egyptian soldier near the northern Sinai city of el-Arish Sunday night, a day after a Coptic priest was gunned down in the same town by suspected militants.
Islamist gunmen have carried out a slew of attacks on northern Sinai towns since the Egyptian military deposed president Mohammed Morsi last Wednesday. In daylight raids Friday, gunmen killed five Egyptian soldiers in el-Arish and Rafah. In the wake of the assaults, Egypt shuttered its border with the Gaza Strip at Rafah and placed security forces in the restive Sinai Peninsula on high alert.
Islamist terrorist groups have grown more daring since the 2011 Egyptian revolution that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, and have carried out regular attacks on UN and Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula, kidnapped tourists, and staged on the gas pipelines that pump fuel to Israel and Jordan.
