Rockets fired at Eilat earlier this month ‘were smuggled out of Libya’
Shin Bet blames Gaza’s Popular Resistance Committees for attacks
Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.
Israel has confirmed that rockets fired at Eilat at the beginning of April were smuggled out of Libya and into the Gaza Strip, and fired from the Sinai by the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, Channel 10 reported on Thursday.
Security personnel analyzed rocket fragments from the Eilat attack and discovered they were identical to rockets which were fired at Netivot during a rocket barrage in March. Additional forensic evidence indicated that these rockets were smuggled out of Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.
Sources in the Shin Bet claim that Hamas knew about the Popular Resistance Committees’ amassing of weapons and intent to fire rockets at Israel, but did nothing to prevent this.
Hundreds of rockets and anti-tank missiles looted from Libya stockpiles have flowed into the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip since the fall of Gaddafi, Israeli officials say. There have also been reports that Russian surface-to-air missiles taken from Libyan arsenals have reached terror groups in Gaza.
