CAIRO: The Egyptian army is clearing buildings deemed a security threat at a distance of up to one kilometre from the Gaza border, an army spokesman said yesterday, accusing groups in the Hamas-run territory of mounting joint attacks with Sinai militants.
Ahmed Ali, the spokesman, said the move did not amount to a buffer zone which Hamas fears Egypt is creating along the border to further isolate Gaza, whose economy is propped up by smuggling through tunnels to Sinai.
He was speaking during a news conference in Cairo to present the army’s progress since it stepped up operations against Islamist militants in Sinai last week.
The army seized weapons including anti-aircraft missiles, he said. Motorised paragliders had also been found, which he said showed an effort to develop new methods of attack.
The Sinai militants have expanded into a security vacuum that emerged following the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. The militants have stepped up attacks there since July, when the army deposed President Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, an ideological cousin of Hamas.
Ali said the army was “dealing” with any building deemed a security threat in a corridor stretching from 500 metres to one kilometre from the Gaza frontier. He said houses concealing tunnels used for weapons smuggling were a threat to national security.
The army had destroyed 152 tunnels since June 30, he added.
Ali declined to accuse Hamas directly of attacks in Egypt, though he said hand grenades stamped with the name of the Palestinian group’s armed wing, the Qassam brigades, had been found in the security sweep.
“There is cooperation between the armed terror groups with their counterparts in the Gaza Strip, and more than one joint operation has been monitored,” Ali said.
Ali said the military on Friday found two bombs beneath a security observation tower with detonation fuses that ran through a tunnel into Gaza. “The detonation was going to happen from Gaza.”
He screened a video in which eight of 18 men detained in the security sweep identified themselves as Palestinian.
An Egyptian journalist yesterday appeared before a military court, accused of spreading lies about the army’s campaign against militants in the Sinai Peninsula.
The court in the Suez canal city of Ismailiya adjourned Ahmed Abu Deraa’s hearing to September 18.
Abu Deraa, who writes for the independent daily Al Masry Al Youm, was detained on September 4 in north Sinai over published reports that army raids had hit a mosque and houses and also injured civilians.
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