CAIRO: On early Tuesday morning, Egypt reported that there was an explosion along the country's Sinai natural gas pipeline near the northern Sinai town of al-Arish, local reports indicated. Egyptian television channel OTV confirmed the reports. It is the fourth such explosion in recent months on the pipeline that delivers natural gas to Israel and Jordan. It is unclear what the extent of the damage is, but comes less than 48 hours after Egyptian authorities reported they would have all repairs to damage on the pipeline from an earlier explosion completed this week. The pipeline was damaged on July 4 in an explosion in the Bir Abd region at Nagah in the northern Sinai Peninsula. According to officials, a group of men in a small truck forced the guards to leave the station at gunpoint before planting an explosive device. That explosion was the third of its kind this year, following attacks on February 5 near the Sinai the Arish compression station and April 27 near the village of el-Sabil, which cut off the flow of natural gas for weeks. In March, an attempted explosion near el-Sabil failed when the device did not detonate. BM
