Natural gas pipeline in Sinai targeted by gunmen

Gunmen blew up and set fire to a natural gas line in the Sinai peninsula early Tuesday, the latest of a series of dozens attacks targeting the key line in recent years.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, near the town of el-Arish, in the northern Sinai.

Egyptian security officials said all roads leading to the area had been closed after the explosion, which took place early Tuesday morning.

The official Egyptian news agency MENA said the national gas company had stopped the flow of the gas.

Since the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 the pipeline has been attacked over two dozen times by jihadists, causing interruptions in the delivery of natural gas to Israel and Jordan.

The situation has prompted Jordan and Israel to search elsewhere for natural gas supplies.

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In many of the past attacks, Ansar Bayt al Maqdis, a jihadi terror group reportedly aligned with the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for attacks and often cited them as revenge for perceived wrongs by the regime in Cairo against its members or affiliates.

The previous attack on the el-Arish pipeline took place mid-October, around the same time as an explosion in Cairo which left 12 people dead and only hours after an Egyptian court sentenced seven convicted militants to death — all but one in absentia — over the killing of 25 soldiers last year.

Egypt has been fighting militants in the Sinai Peninsula for much of the past year since former president Mohammed Morsi was toppled in a military coup in July 2013. The violence has spread to Cairo in a series of suicide bombings, assassinations and attacks in the capital.