An Egyptian court on Monday sentenced 14 Islamists to death for attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula, showing Egypt\’s determination to put down militancy in a region critical to relations with neighboring Israel.
Israel likely will not have palm fronds from the Sinai for this year\’s Sukkot lulavs.
Egypt has identified seven suspects, including one Egyptian, in the killing of 16 border guards last month that triggered the biggest security sweep along its frontier with Israel in decades, the interior minister said.
Egypt\’s military is deploying light armored vehicles in Sinai to replace some heavy tanks whose presence at the border area had raised concerns in Israel, security sources said on Tuesday.A source said last week the army had begun withdrawing some of the tanks, after they had been deployed as part of an operation against militants who attacked and killed 16 border guards on August 5.
Egypt has withdrawn some 20 tanks from Sinai in response to Israel\’s security concerns, according to an unnamed Egyptian official.
Egypt\’s military said on Wednesday it would broaden its offensive against militants in the Sinai Peninsula, a campaign that has raised concerns in Israel about the movement of heavy armor into the area near its border.
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.
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