Four hurt as Egypt’s troops take on Islamists

Militants attacked Egypt’s security forces and wounded four policemen in the Sinai peninsula yesterday, in the tenth day of clashes since 16 soldiers were killed in the volatile borderland near Israel and the Gaza Strip earlier this month.

The troops were returning from an early morning raid where they had arrested two suspects in their homes when militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their convoy as it was driving along a major road, a security official said.

The government troops fired back immediately but the attackers fled, the official added.

The attack occurred on the coastal road linking northern Sinai’s main city of el-Arish to the Egypt-Gaza border town of Rafah.

Senior security officials say Islamic militants were behind an earlier assault on the soldiers on 5 August, the worst attack on troops from inside Egypt in living memory.

They died when masked gunmen stormed their ­security checkpoint, mowing them down as they broke fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The attackers then stole an armoured vehicle and stormed across the border into Israel, where an Israeli airstrike stopped them in their tracks, killing six of their number.

Large swathes of northern Sinai have plunged into lawlessness following the ousting of the former president Hosni Mubarak. Weapons, smuggled from Libya, have found their way into the militants’ hands. The weapons and the security vacuum have fuelled the rise of al-Qaeda-inspired militant groups, which have staged several low-level cross-border ­attacks on Israel.

The attacks prompted the military to launch an offensive in the increasingly unstable peninsula. Most ­operations there however remain limited and the ­objectives are unclear. However, for the first time since Egypt signed a peace deal with Israel, helicopters, tanks and troops have been deployed there – a move which before had not been allowed.

The killings also sped up a military and security shake-up in Cairo, as Islamist president Mohammed Morsi ordered the defence minister and a number of the former ruling military council into retirement, as well as dismissing Egypt’s intelligence chief.