A police officer and five conscripts were killed on Tuesday morning when an explosive device was detonated as an armoured vehicle passed along the Rafah-Arish road in North Sinai. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, no group had claimed responsibility for the attack, though it may have been in reprisal for a security operation in which seven members of Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis were killed early this week. Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told a press conference Sunday that the seven terrorists died in a joint operation by police and the army in Suez Governorate. The operation, which lasted for 48 hours, targeted a shelter used by extremists in the Al-Galala mountain area. “Following a heavy shootout, security forces managed to kill the seven members and later identified them by DNA tests. The seven militants were among the most dangerous elements of Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis militant group,” Ibrahim said. The Al-Qaeda-inspired group is at the forefront of attacks that have targeted the police and army since the ousting of Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. It has claimed responsibility for several terrorist attacks in Cairo and Sinai, including an attempt on Ibrahim's life last September. The security operation followed a failed attempt by Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis to target an army camp on the road between Cairo and Ain Al-Sokhna. When the attack was foiled, the perpetrators fled to their hideout. The army and police raided the militant group's shelter in Suez's Al-Galala Mountain the following day. The seven Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis members killed “participated in terrorist operations during the last year that targeted security personnel and civilians, attacked police facilities and attempted to spread chaos and threaten national security,” Ibrahim told reporters. According to Ibrahim, the seven were implicated in several operations, including the Farafra checkpoint attack, which killed 22 Egyptian border guards on 22 July; last month's attack in Al-Dabaa, which left five policemen dead; and the bombings of the Cairo and Daqahleya security directorates on 24 January 2014 and 24 December 2013. “Investigations have confirmed that the militants were planning to escalate operations against the armed forces, the police and vital installations in response to the security crackdown,” said Ibrahim. Ismail Alexandrani, an expert on Sinai's militant groups, says the Interior Minister appears to be attempting to “close the files” on earlier cases by attributing them to the seven killed members of Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. As Ibrahim said at the press conference, “Following the operation in Suez we have eliminated 99 per cent of the capability of Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis.” Alexandrani is less sure. The group, he says, is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Since the ouster of Morsi in July 2013, militant attacks have claimed the lives of more than 500 security personnel. Ibrahim directed a message to the families of the victims of militant attacks, saying, “Your sons have paved the way to stability, and the security forces will hunt down all those who use religion as a cover to their terrorist attacks. The police are capable of facing the elements of evil, terrorism and outlaws.” Major General Mohamed Nour Al-Din, a former assistant to the minister of the interior, expects reprisal operations in the coming days. “Given the successful security campaign against Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, culminating in the Suez operation, I expect the terrorist group to attempt some form of retaliatory operation in the next few days. Security forces are well equipped to handle any upcoming threat,” Nour Al-Din said in an interview with Al-Hadath channel. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis has claimed responsibility for the most serious terrorist attacks since last summer. Other groups — Ansar Al-Sharia Brigades in Egypt, Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt), Al-Furqan Brigades and Al-Ziaab Al-Monfareda (Lone Wolves) — are also believed to be active, but are considered much smaller and of less threat than Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. Whatever names the groups adopt, says Nour Al-Din, they have a common agenda and are all sponsored by the International Muslim Brotherhood Organisation. In a phone interview with CBC channel on Sunday night, Ibrahim restated his belief of the direct link between Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis and the Muslim Brotherhood. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis has claimed it is seeking revenge “from the army and security forces” for “suppressing and killing Egyptian civilians” during and after the violent dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins in August 2013. In December, a video was released by Al-Battar, an online jihadi media group that posts video produced by Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. The short video was a report about Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, narrated by an unidentified individual who spoke Arabic with a non-Egyptian accent. The video claimed that Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis had emerged in the last years of the Mubarak-era to avenge military campaigns that targeted jihadis in Sinai who fired missiles into Israel and sabotaged the Egyptian-Israeli gas pipeline. Despite army “provocations”, under both the Supreme Council of Armed Forces and Morsi, the group, claimed the video, had refused to be dragged into direct confrontation. This changed after Morsi's ouster and the subsequent “massacre of Muslims in Egypt.” The police, military and intelligence were then targeted to “avenge” Muslims.
