Normally at odds with the government, Bedouins of the Sinai supported government troops in repelling an assault by non-Egyptian militants, Amirah Ibrahim reports While clashes between protesters and the government erupted in cities and towns across Egypt, violence in North Sinai took a twist. Bedouins, who have often clashed with government troops, this time closed ranks with the same forces, taking the side of the security apparatus against attacks carried out by non-Egyptian militants. On Monday, in the Egyptian half of the divided city of Rafah, at the border with Israel, reports said Egyptian security forces, with the help of local tribesmen, repelled attackers wielding rocket-propelled grenades. Two people were reportedly injured. "The Rumailaat tribe is at present securing the security forces units at Al-Ahrash," Salem Abul-Marahil, a PA member in Rafah, said. "The Central Security Forces headquarters was not damaged, and there has been no causalities among the forces." Two armoured vehicles were sent to the location to secure the headquarters. Over the past decade, confrontations between the government and Bedouin residents of the desert peninsula had included armed attacks targeting security forces and even the capturing of policemen for hours. Bedouins said they had demands which were not being met by the government. That attack came as an Egyptian investigator announced that a blast on Saturday at a north Sinai gas terminal was not caused by a gas leak but was a bombing carried out by four armed men. A natural gas pipeline that runs through Egypt's North Sinai exploded, disrupting flows to Israel and Jordan. A security source in North Sinai said "foreign elements" targeted the branch of the pipe that supplies Jordan. The terminal's guards had testified that the men had stormed the terminal in two cars, disarmed the guards and then set off the explosives by remote control. "They were speaking Arabic but not with an Egyptian dialect, telling us to move away from the station and then it exploded," one guard said. The Egyptian army sealed the main source of natural gas supplying the pipeline and put out the fire. Jordan said gas supplies from Egypt were expected to be halted for a week until the pipeline is repaired. Israel gets 40 per cent of its natural gas from Egypt. Opposition groups in Egypt have long complained that Egyptian gas is sold to Israel at preferential prices and that the contract with Israel East Mediterranean Gas (EMG) violated bureaucratic regulations. Hussein Salem, one of the major shareholders in the company that supplies Egyptian gas to EMG, is said to have fled the country with some $1.5 billion. There were unconfirmed reports of more violence. On Saturday a Coptic church in the Egyptian half of Rafah near the Gaza Strip was reportedly set ablaze. Witnesses said they saw flames inside the Mar Guirguis Church in Rafah after hearing an explosion. The North Sinai governor denied there had been any explosion in Mar Guirguis. Another report claimed that the public library was set on fire but this could not be confirmed. Investigators believe Palestinian militants carried out the attacks. Egypt closed the Rafah crossing point, but several members of the Islamist group who escaped from Egyptian prisons during the tumult of the past two weeks returned to Hamas-run Gaza via underground tunnels that connect the two sides of Rafah. Israel has declined two requests by Egypt to deploy more troops in Sinai to control the violence there. Limits were placed on the number and type of Egyptian security forces allowed into Sinai under the terms of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Egypt declared a state of heightened alert in the area. Just after the unrest broke out in Egypt on 25 January, President Mubarak dismissed the North Sinai governor and appointed Abdel-Wahab Mabrouk, a military commander, in an attempt to stop the violence which erupted during the early days of the protests. Gunmen had opened fire on a governorate building in North Sinai but no casualties were reported.
