Egypt Blames Gaza For SAMs

Egypt has blamed the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for supplying weapons that downed an attack helicopter in the Sinai Peninsula.

Officials said the Gaza Strip has become a source of surface-to-air missiles to Al Qaida-aligned militias in Sinai. They said Palestinian allies in the strip were believed to have smuggled the missile that downed an Egyptian Air Force helicopter on Jan. 26.

“The missiles are arriving through the smuggling tunnels in Gaza, and include weapons from China, Iran and Russia,” an official said.

The Al Qaida-aligned Ansar Beit Al Maqdis claimed responsibility for the downing of Egypt’s AH-64 Apache attack helicopter near the Sinai-Gaza border. Officials identified the weapon used by Ansar, in the first such operation in Sinai, as the Soviet-origin SA-7.

“The SA-7s are being smuggled from Gaza to Sinai,” [Ret.] Egyptian Gen. Sameh Yazal said.

For its part, Hamas has denied any link to the SAM attack in Sinai. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Ansar, which claimed responsibility for attacks around Cairo, was not operating in the Gaza Strip.

“These [SA-7] missiles are easily available on the black market,” Abu Zuhri said.

Officials said the military has determined that Ansar as well as other Islamist militias have acquired scores of shoulder-fired SAMs over the last year. They said most of the SA-7s were believed hidden in caches in the northeastern Sinai towns of Rafah and Sheik Zweid.

Islamist gunmen were also believed to have blown up a natural gas pipeline in Sinai that supplies neighboring Jordan. The attack, the fourth time the Arab Gas Pipeline has been targeted in 2014, took place on Feb. 11 south of El Arish.

“The terrorist camps in the Gaza Strip must be attacked,” Egyptian journalist Mohammed Al Alfi said in a television interview. “Izzedin Din Kassam, which trains and sends them over here, must be attacked.”