Egypt yesterday mounted a massive-scale sweep of Sinai one day after five anonymous rockets were fired into the jordanian port city of Aqaba, killing a Jordanian. "Following the Jordanian comments, Egypt has launched a wide security sweep of the Sinai peninsula," an Egyptian security official said. But he insisted "there are no organised groups operating in Sinai and security on the peninsula is extremely tight. Any suspicious activity would have been detected," he said. South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel-Fadil Shousha told the German Press Agency (dpa): "Let the media say whatever they want. The border between Egypt, Israel and Jordan is a region of mountains and it does not make sense to launch the type of missiles they are talking about." One person was killed and five injured in Aqaba when the five rockets struck on Monday though no injuries were reported on the Israeli side. A senior Jordanian official said earlier that his country had proof the deadly rocket that landed in the port town of Aqaba had been fired from Sinai. At least five blasts were heard on Monday, with one rocket exploding in open ground outside the Israeli resort of Eilat, two crashing into the Red Sea and the rest hitting Jordan. A Jordanian official close to Amman's investigation of the attack said on Tuesday that it was the second such incident in three months. "We can now say without hesitation that the Grad rocket was launched from Sinai," said the official close to the investigation who was speaking on condition of anonymity 24 hours after the rocket slammed into Aqaba. "We have strong suspicions about the identity of the group behind this attack," he added, declining to name the group for now. There has been no official reaction by Egypt to the rocket attacks. On Monday, an Egyptian security official again speaking on condition of anonymity denied the attacks were launched from Sinai, a mountainous desert region that flanks the Gulf of Aqaba.
