The Egyptian army has discovered a network of booby traps along its border with the Gaza Strip, a military spokesman said Sunday, as he criticized the Palestinian territory’s Hamas rulers for poorly controlling their side of the border and urged them to reign in militant groups operating there.
The accusations, made in a news conference explaining the military’s ongoing offensive in the volatile northern Sinai area, were a rare public criticism of the Palestinian militant group by the military since the July ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in a coup.
Egyptian media has been pointing the finger at Hamas for meddling in Egypt’s affairs, some suggesting that the ouster of Morsi, an ally and fellow Islamist, has prompted the group to cause trouble in Sinai by supporting militant groups there. Hamas officials have denied interfering and complain that Egyptian authorities have imposed the strictest restrictions on the border and its vital Rafah crossing in years.
“Securing borders is a joint mission for those sharing the borders. It is also up to Hamas to exert more effort to control the borders,” Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said. “Egypt deserves more than the effort we are seeing from the other side to secure the border.”
Ali said troops have arrested 309 militants and criminals, including Palestinians, in operations that began in the region in July and were stepped up with an offensive last weekend. They also uncovered weapons caches that included anti-aircraft missiles, long-range mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and tons of explosives, he added.
In the last 48 hours, he said, troops had discovered explosives laid in tunnels along the border and under Egyptian watchtowers, with detonating wires running back into Gaza.
“This will call for new measures … to deal with these threats that endanger the forces and the borders,” Ali told reporters, adding that Egyptian intelligence had also discovered that a number of insurgent attacks in Sinai had been coordinated with Gaza-based extremist groups.
Since Morsi’s overthrow, militant attacks against security forces in northern Sinai have escalated, a trend Egyptian authorities blame on Morsi and his allies.
Morsi’s supporters insist they are peaceful, but some have openly said the situation in Sinai will not stabilize unless he is restored to power.
In Gaza, Hamas government spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein denied militants were using the Palestinian territory as a staging ground for operations against Egypt.
“We deny any connection between Gaza, its resistance and government, and the tunnels and the explosives which were mentioned by the Egyptian army spokesman today,” al-Ghussein told reporters.
Egypt’s military launched the recent Sinai offensive last Saturday in response to militant attacks they say have killed more than 100 policemen and soldiers in recent months.
In the worst single attack, gunmen pulled police recruits from buses and shot 25 of them dead on Aug. 19. And last week, in a new escalation, two suicide bombers hit a military intelligence building nearly simultaneously, killing at least six troops.
During the ensuing offensive, Egyptian troops began demolishing homes along the Gaza border to block the flow of militants and weapons. Ali said houses had been knocked down on the Egyptian side up to a half-mile away, but that the owners would be compensated.
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