CAIRO Aug 8 (Reuters) – Armed men opened fire on a security
checkpoint on Wednesday in Egypt’s Al-Arish city in the Sinai
peninsula, state media said, after 16 border guards were shot
dead in an attack on Sunday blamed partly on Palestinian
militants.
Exchanges of gunfire continued late into the night, but
there were no immediate reports of injuries, Egypt’s MENA state
news agency said.
“Unknown armed men opened fire on a checkpoint on the main
road between Al-Arish and Rafah (a city located at the border
between Egypt and Israel),” MENA said in a report also carried
on Egyptian state television.
Lawlessness in the rugged desert region has spread since the
fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in an uprising 18 months ago and
the election of an Islamist successor whose commitment to
security co-operation with Israel has yet to be tested.
Wednesday’s attack on the checkpoint was the 29th since the
uprising, according to MENA, which also reported that security
forces had closed the road where the assault took place.
Egypt’s Al-Ahram Online news website reported that clashes
erupted at three checkpoints in Al-Arish on Wednesday between
armed men and security forces and that one resident was injured
while watching one of the clashes from the balcony of his home.
Crowds of angry mourners wept at the military funeral of the
slain guards in Cairo on Tuesday after the deadliest assault
along Egypt’s tense Sinai Peninsula border with Israel and Gaza
in decades.
In reaction to Sunday’s attacks, Egypt began to seal off
smuggling tunnels into the Gaza Strip, according to a security
source.
A Reuters reporter in the border town of Rafah said heavy
equipment was brought to the Egyptian side of the tunnels, which
are used to smuggle people to and from Gaza as well as scarce
food and fuel for the small territory’s population.
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