Daring assassination attempt shows that ISIS affiliate in Sinai has modern weapons

An air force helicopter was blown to pieces in a by-the-book military operation that could have seen two senior ministers killed. This was the latest in a string of attacks that could force Egypt – and Israel – to respond.

A video released late last week by Wilayat Sinai, the Islamic State offshoot in the Sinai Peninsula, got relatively little attention in the Israeli media. It shows a Kornet anti-tank missile being fired at an Egyptian air force helicopter parked at the military airport near Al-Arish. To the calls of “Allahu Akbar,” the missile hits the helicopter and blows it to smithereens.

The explosion killed three people – one of the pilots, a security guard and the bureau chief of Egyptian Defense Minister Sedki Sobhy. The incident documented was not a terror attack, but an assassination attempt. The precision strike took place during a visit to the base by Sobhy and Egyptian Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar. The date and location of the visit were not announced in advance. It seems that Wilayat Sinai obtained intelligence information that exposed the minister to attack.

It’s not the first time that Wilayat Sinai, now the most lethal and effective branch of ISIS in the Middle East, has succeeded in attacking a well-secured target. Two years ago, in November 2015, a Russian passenger plane blew up in midair, shortly after it took off from the Sharm al-Sheikh airport carrying 224 people. All those on board were killed. It later emerged that Islamic State operatives had managed to put a bomb into the plane’s cargo hold along with the passengers’ luggage. The bombing was enough to destroy much of Sinai’s tourist trade, which was heavily reliant on charter flights from Russia.

Wilayat Sinai has recently had a series of murderous successes. In each of the previous three years, some 500 Egyptian security personnel and civilians were killed in terrorist attacks by radical Islamists, led by the ISIS branch, in Sinai. This year, the number could be much higher, after the killing of 311 worshipers in the attack at the Al Rawda Sufi mosque in northern Sinai at the end of November. An analysis of the attack shows it was meticulously planned. A relatively large number of armed terrorists stormed all the windows and doors of the building and shot the worshipers at close range. As in other instances, the Egyptian authorities trumpeted the large number of fatalities among the terrorists, but the true number of ISIS losses is unclear.

But the most impressive attack initiated by Wilayat Sinai this year took place on July 7, at the Al-Najizat military camp some 10 kilometers from Nitzana on the Israeli side of the border. The camp, where a commando battalion is based, is situated near a Bedouin village. The organization distributed detailed videos documenting the attack, some of which were included in a propaganda video ISIS issued recently summing up its terror attacks in various countries during 2017.

Here, too, there are signs of meticulous planning in accordance with a cogent, calculated military doctrine. The terrorists initially placed obstacles on the roads leading to the military camp to prevent Egyptian reinforcements from reaching the area. Then a car bomb exploded at the base gate. The explosion caused many deaths and great confusion. As disorder reigned, dozens of terrorists in SUVs (Toyota 4X4s) equipped with heavy machine guns invaded the base and massacred the remaining soldiers.

Source: Haaretz