CAIRO (Updated) - Egyptian firemen and civil protection forces on Tuesday put out a fire that blast a gas pipeline and a station in Al-Arish early in the day, the official Middle East News Agency reported. The station guard said that about six masked men broke into the station by cutting the barbed wire surrounding it. 'They seem to have planted explosives because the explosion occurred a few seconds after entering the station". He pointed out that the explosion damaged the main pump causing gas leakage, and the spread of fire inside the station and adjacent areas. The guard said he saw the men taking off in a van. A senior official at North Sinai Governorate said that the fire left two men of the surrounding area injured, caused damage to nearby cultivated plots crops and substantial loss in a poultry farm. GASCO officials are currently taking protective measures to prevent further damage. The attack on the pipeline which supplies gas to Israel and Jordan is the sixth since the ouster of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak in February. Last month, an attempt to blow up the gas terminal near Al-Arish was thwarted as four armed men were arrested before carrying out their attack. The same month, Egypt stepped up its police and army patrols in Sinai to protect the pipeline. Egypt supplies 43 per cent of Israel's natural gas and 40 per cent of Israel's electricity comes from this source.
