Israel has boosted its rocket defenses near its southern border with Egypt to counter possible attacks from Islamist militants fighting security forces in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, Israeli officials said on Tuesday.
Violence in Sinai has surged since the army ousted elected Islamist President Mohamed Mursi on July 3, with militant skilling at least 20 people in almost daily assaults in the area.
“We hear reports every day of attacks there and our concern is that the guns will be turned on us,” Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said. “We have indeed strengthened our deployment along the border.”
He was speaking on a visit to an “Iron Dome” missile defense system that was deployed last week in the southern town Eilat.
He said that since Mursi’s overthrow, Egypt had increased its efforts to curb militants who have exploited a security vacuum in the Sinai since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.
“We can see much more effective activity of the Egyptian army and security forces there in the past few months and mainly in the past few weeks after the change in government,” Yaalon said.
With Egyptian security forces pressing the militants, Israel was expecting trouble, one Israeli official said.
“The assessment in recent days is that given the Egyptian crackdown in Sinai, the terrorist elements there will try to demonstrate their survivability and defiance by shelling us,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.
A rocket fired from Sinai landed in Israel earlier this month and its remnants were found in hills north of Eilat, a Red Sea resort that abuts Egypt to the west and Jordan to the east.
-
Two killed as militants attack Egyptian army post in Sinai
Two civilians were killed and a third wounded on Friday when suspected Islamist militants fired RPG rockets at an army checkpoint in el-Arish in ... Middle East -
Sinai militant attacks kill six Egyptians in July’s worst violence
A string of attacks in the Sinai peninsula on Monday killed six Egyptians and wounded a further 11, medical sources told Reuters on Monday. At least ... Middle East -
Report: Ten militants killed in Egypt army Sinai sweep
Ten jihadists have been killed in Egypt’s restive Sinai peninsula in the past two days during an army offensive against Islamist militants, the ... Middle East