U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Egypt\’s foreign minister to keep lines of communication open with Israel amid tensions over an Egyptian push against militants in the neighboring Sinai desert, the State Department said on Thursday.
Israel is concerned about the deployment of Egyptian armor in a push against militants in the neighboring Sinai desert, saying the vehicles\’ entry wasn\’t coordinated and is in violation of a 1979 peace treaty, an Israeli official said on Monday.
Egypt reportedly is planning to introduce tanks in the Sinai for the first time since the 1973 war with Israel.
They came in Toyota pick-up trucks, dozens of heavily armed masked men, firing machineguns and waving the black flag of Al-Qaida as terrified residents and police huddled indoors, and then disappeared again, melting away into the mountains and remote villages of Egypt\’s Sinai desert.
Egypt\’s new Islamist president Mohamed Mursi dismissed Cairo\’s two top generals on Sunday and cancelled a military order that curbed his powers, in a dramatic move that could free him of some of the restrictions of military rule.Egypt\’s new Islamist president Mohamed Mursi dismissed Cairo\’s two top generals on Sunday and cancelled a military order that curbed his powers, in a dramatic move that could free him of some of the restrictions of military rule.
Egypt poured troops into North Sinai on Thursday in an offensive meant to tackle militants in the Israeli border region, but residents were skeptical, saying they had seen no sign of anyone being killed in what they described as a \”haphazard\” operation.
Egyptian troops have launched the largest operation in the Sinai desert peninsula since the 1972 war with Israel, killing at least 20 terrorists believed to be responsible for Sunday’s attack on an Egyptian border post that left 16 soldiers dead. Six of the attackers died when they drove across the Israeli border in a commandeered armored car and were hit by Israeli air missiles.
Israel on Monday dismissed a claim by Egypt\’s Muslim Brotherhood that it was in any way involved in a deadly attack on a police station in Sinai a day earlier in which 16 policemen were killed.
Israel and Egypt have a common interest in keeping the border between them safe, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday during a tour of the site of Sunday’s deadly attack in which Sinai-based gunmen killed at least 15 Egyptian police officers and injured at least seven.
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