CAIRO: Egypt's newly appointed spokesman for the armed forces, Colonel Ahmed Mohamed Ali, announced the details of the operations in the Sinai peninsula that followed the shooting of 16 Egyptian soldiers in August at a checkpoint near the Israeli border. Ali announced in a press conference early Saturday the destruction of 31 smuggling tunnels near the border with the Gaza Strip in addition to killing 32 people involved in illegal activities and arresting another 38 who remain under investigation. The all-out war operations have worried the human rights community in Egypt as previous operations seeking “terrorists” in Sinai have violated the rights of many innocent citizens and their families. Ali said that the armed forces has full control over the peninsula and that this control is not in violation of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Ali added that following the January 2011 revolution events escalated in a way that “threatened the safety and security of the homeland” and “this is why the armed forced needed to regain control over terrorists cells taking refuge in Sinai.”
