After four days of the military offensive against jihadist militants based mostly in the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptian army on Monday claimed to have killed 28 “terrorists” and arrested another 126 suspects, in addition to destroying a hundred hiding places and confiscated several vehicles and weapons.
The Operation Sinai 2018, as has been baptized despite also include actions in the northern Nile Delta and the Western Desert, is a joint work of air and ground forces and aims to decapitate Wilaya Sina, the Egyptian subsidiary of the self-styled Islamic State, the most powerful and deadly organization of the insurgency in Egypt.
From the beginning of the offensive, the Army sealed the entry and exit to the northern Sinai area, also closed the Rafah border crossing that connects with the Gaza Strip, and ordered the closure of all gas stations until the end of the operations.
The life of the inhabitants of the peninsula has also been altered by the suspension of classes at all levels of the education system, and cuts in the telephone and Internet networks. Since the appearance in 2013 of a bloodthirsty insurgency in the Sinai, the Egyptian Government has applied a policy of scorched earth that has not managed to neutralize this threat, and on top it has alienated a part of the population. Activists and NGOs have reported habitual abuses and violations of human rights.
Several analysts had already anticipated a major military operation in the Sinai after President Abdelfatá al Sisi had reacted to the massacre of al-Rawda’s Sufi mosque, the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history in which they died. of 300 people, warning that the State would respond “with brute force”.
The action coincides with the beginning of the presidential campaign for the presidential elections at the end of March. After the authorities will apply legal reprisals against all the aspirants who represented a challenge for Al Sisi – two of them are still in prison – the elections are seen as a farce, but the marshal needs a high participation rate to legitimize his re-election.
The attack against the jihadist groups comes days after The New York Times published an exclusive in which, citing anonymous sources from several countries, claimed that Israel has committed a hundred secret bombings since 2015 against jihadist positions in the Sinai Peninsula, base of operations of Wilaya Sina.
The bombings would have enjoyed the approval of the Egyptian Government, which since the arrival of Al Sisi has strengthened its relations with Israel, a former enemy with which it waged four wars in the last century and which continues to arouse a feeling of resentment among a large part of the population. Egyptian However, the Egyptian Army has denied the veracity of the information, while Benyamin Netanyahu’s executive has refused to comment on it.
