Ahmed Selim reports from Arish on the third attack on gas pipelines in Sinai Men carrying rifles and machine guns fill the streets and there are sounds of random gunfire. It is an everyday scene in northern Sinai. But on 4 July even those hardened to the current situation were driven out of their homes in the middle of the night by an explosion that rocked the foundations of the buildings. Is it war, they asked, as they watched flames tower into the sky. The flames were coming from the natural gas pipeline to Jordan and Israel, attacked for the third time since February. According to North Sinai Governor Abdel-Wahab Mabrouk, unidentified saboteurs detonated explosives at the pipeline feeding station near Al-Nagah, in Bir Al-Abdu. Local villagers watched the flames soar dozens of metres into the air as security forces rushed to close off the roads leading to Arish and Ismailia. They failed to apprehend the saboteurs. Mabrouk says the situation was quickly brought under control. Gas supplies to the feeding station were cut and the flames slowly subsided. No one was injured in the explosion. Guards at the feeding station told Al-Ahram Weekly that two four-wheel vehicles raced up to their positions around 2am. "The men inside jumped out of the trucks and yelled at us to run for our lives because they were going to blow up the pipeline," said one guard. "They were carrying machine guns. When we tried to call for help on our walkie-talkies they threatened us with their guns, snatched mobiles out of our hands, and kept shouting at us to clear out. In the end, they told us to climb into the trucks and drove off. After driving for a short while, one of them took hold of a device and pressed a button. Suddenly, there was a huge boom and my colleague passed out. Then they pushed us out of the truck and drove off." Inhabitants in the vicinity told the Weekly that they had seen four masked men in two four- wheel drive trucks and another two riding a motorcycle alongside. They were speeding away from the explosion. One villager relates: "When we heard the explosion we rushed out of our houses and seconds later the whole town began to shake. People began to scream and wail. Some began to shout that war had broken out and began to gather up possessions in order to flee the town." While army units took up positions in the area of the explosion, people's committees assisted security forces in combing tracks in northern and central Sinai. An official from the gas company said that there had been three previous attempted bombings, two of which damaged the pipeline to Jordan and Israel. The third failed. Representatives of local tribes and the Egyptian police deny any local involvement in the incidents. Yasser El-Iskandarani, one of the engineers responsible for the safety of the pipeline, said that seeing flames after the explosion was a good sign. "Our worst fear in the event of an explosion is that fire doesn't break out. That would mean one of two things. Either there would be a succession of explosions along the pipeline, which would end up destroying the entire town, or gas would leak into the air causing hundreds of casualties among those who inhaled it. If the gas catches fire it would trigger a fire ball that would be almost impossible to bring under control." The rugged topography of northern Sinai facilitates the infiltration of terrorists, saboteurs and other criminal elements. But the glare of suspicion has not avoided the indigenous inhabitants of the area, especially in view of bouts of tension between them and Egyptian security forces. Tensions between security forces and the Bedouins of central Sinai reached an unprecedented height two years ago in the course of manhunts for wanted criminals and the search for informers to help hand over suspects to the police. The situation had deteriorated so badly that pitched battles erupted sporadically between the Bedouin and the police. But there was another response to the heavy-handed security agencies. It took the form of dozens of threats to bomb the natural gas pipeline to Israel and other vital facilities unless security forces called off their manhunts and stopped trampling on the dignity of the Bedouins and raiding their homes. Many Bedouins who were described as fleeing justice but who, themselves, complained of unwarranted harassment and brutality forsook the comfort of their homes and families and took to the hills with their guns. One of the local people this reporter spoke with said, "Sadly, we've returned to square one, before 2007. After the strikes and sit-ins in 2007, the Interior Ministry pledged that it would release detainees, review the sentences that were issued in absentia, and free those detained without charge. They also promised to improve their treatment of the Bedouin and promote development. None of what they promised happened. The Interior Ministry reneged on all its pledges. We had no alternative but to appeal for the army's intervention in the Sinai because we refused to deal with the Interior Ministry which was escalating its oppression." His colleague, Salama Hassan, clarified. "Bedouins have protected Egypt's borders since antiquity. We can defend and we can prevent anything as long as the Interior Ministry keeps the peace with us." The Bedouins insist that they were not behind Monday's pipeline explosion and say they have been doing their best to protect Egypt's vital facilities in the Sinai, and the gas pipeline in particular. They blame the explosion on foreign terrorist elements. Seven years ago, former minister of petroleum Sameh Fahmi set up the first company to offer petroleum services in the Sinai. The Sinai Petroleum Services Company would recruit 50 per cent of its staff from the local population and offer ancillary services such as digging wells, laying pipelines, constructing tanks and storage facilities, importing equipment and materials, soil analyses, and supply labour and the accommodation needed for workers. The ministry stipulated that the chairman of the company and its director of personnel had to be from Sinai. The petroleum sector has adopted a strategy aiming at developing Sinai's petroleum and mineral wealth, both as a matter of national security and as a way to promote the development of the peninsula. As General Gaber El-Arabi, secretary- general of the governorate of North Sinai, put it: "The Sinai's foremost concern is development and one of the main foundations of this process is being laid by the petroleum sector." "The petroleum sector is giving the area a much needed boost in the form of a safe and clean form of energy for generating the electricity needed by factories and tourist and commercial facilities." Natural gas now feeds generators at Uyoun Moussa, Sharq Al-Tafria and Arish, and is pumped directly to the Al-Ramadi and North Sinai cement factories. "The Sinai has many advantages over other areas that produce crude oil in Egypt," says El-Arabi. "In addition to its strategic location, its fields offer different types and grades of oil." Initial inspections of the scene of the explosion, performed under the supervision of Counsellor Abdel-Nasser El-Tayeb of the North Sinai prosecutor's office, indicate that explosive charges had been placed beneath the major gas pipe and that they were detonated by a remote control device. It was the same method used in earlier attacks, suggesting that the perpetrators were the same. Investigators obtained samples of the substance used in the charge and have sent them for forensic analysis. According to the report from the prosecutor-general's office, one of the charges failed to detonate because of faulty wiring. It too has been sent for forensic analysis. The explosion at a pipeline that has long been the subject of vehement criticism in Egypt triggered angry reactions in Israel. Israeli army radio station Kol Tsahil reported that the huge explosion would cost the Israeli economy five million shekels each day the flow is interrupted. Israeli officials strongly condemned the act, which was undertaken by a group of gunmen who forced their way onto a gas field in the Sinai and planted a number of explosive charges beneath the pipeline. The radio station mentioned that this was the third attack on the pipeline by unidentified persons. It added that a similar explosion targeted a portion of the pipeline near Arish two months ago and that it took 40 days to repair the damage. In Jordan, an official from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Wealth announced that the flow of gas from Egypt to Jordan had come to a complete halt following the explosion on Monday morning. Jordan normally receives 50 million cubic feet of natural gas a day through the pipeline. Currently, Jordanian petroleum workers are trying to pump out the gas that remains in the pipeline after the Egyptian authorities turned off the valves in order to stop the fire and leakage. The official added that all electricity generating stations in Jordan had to shift to industrial fuel and diesel until the pipeline is restored and the flow of natural gas from Egypt resumes. According to Jordanian authorities, the change-over will cost the electricity sector $3.5 million a day.
