Investigations into a man who is accused of being a leading jihadist, Hamada Abu Shita, have revealed important details about the identities of suspects of an attack at a Sinai security checkpoint last month, a high-ranking military source told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
A group of assailants had killed 16 Egyptian security officers at the checkpoint on 5 August, then attempted to cross the nearby Israeli border with a stolen armored vehicle.
The source, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces who is connected to the ongoing military operations in Sinai, said Abu Shita told military prosecutors in Ismailia the identities of the alleged attackers.
Abu Shita said the perpetrators include two Palestinians who entered Egypt through tunnels on 31 July and lived with him for six days to prepare for the attack.
However, Abu Shita denied knowing about their intention to carry out the attack and stressed that he had them in his house as guests because of their friendship.
The source said Abu Shita told the prosecutors his two Palestinian guests left his house the morning of the attack, then returned that evening to take their belongings and told him they participated in it. They left the house in a car without license plates.
A Palestinian passport was found where Abu Shita was arrested, the source said.
The source stressed that Egyptian authorities sent a request yesterday to Hamas officials to speed up the arrest of the two suspects and hand them over to Egypt for trial.
Twenty-one suspects in the attack are now in custody. Three of them will be released in a few days, however, since they have been proven not to be involved in the events, the source said.
The Hamas leadership in Gaza has vowed to collaborate with Egypt to identify the assailants. A Hamas delegation in Cairo met Saturday with senior Egyptian officials and pledged to tighten security measures at the border.
But neither government has fully pursued ending the movements of people and goods through tunnels that link the besieged strip to Egypt.
Meanwhile, reports circulated in the media Saturday that the Israeli spy agency Mossad was operating inside Sinai, following a statement by a militant group accusing the agency of killing one of its men in the peninsula.
The group, called Jama’at Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, said on its website that Israel hired spies from among Bedouin tribes to facilitate the killing of a member, who died after a bomb planted in his motorbike was detonated. This group had previously claimed responsibility for the repeated bombings of the gas pipeline that transports natural gas to Israel through a deal with Egypt.
The military has continued to withdraw heavy military vehicles from North Sinai, and a state of calm has prevailed in the background of the Operation Eagle campaign targeting armed militants. Israeli media have repeatedly expressed the country’s wariness over Egypt’s movement of arms into parts of Sinai without prior consent, given the arms restrictions under the peace treaty between the two countries.
In South Sinai, security authorities in Sharm el-Sheikh have evacuated all police checkpoints after the killing of two young Bedouins yesterday during an exchange of fire with police. A number of the victims’ family members burned a police car, cut off the Salam Road in front of the Sharm el-Sheikh International Hospital, and kidnapped a police officer before later releasing him.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
