Belatedly,
Egypt now claims they were the ones who
killed the jihadists in the Sinai on Friday:
Speaking to Al-Ahram Arabic news website on Saturday, an informed source denied claims of coordination between the Egyptian armed forces and Israel in the attack launched on Friday in North Sinai, but did reveal details of the military operation.
According to the anonymous source, the attack was part of an unannounced operation by the military to crack down on “terrorists and jihadists” in the restive Sinai peninsula. He added that at least four jihadists were killed in the attack.
“The intelligence apparatus found out that there was a plan by jihadists to target several vital spots in Sinai and to destroy the Al-Salam bridge crossing the Suez canal on the second day of Eid El-Fitr [Friday],” said the source, adding that a state of emergency was declared among forces of the second field army and border guards. In addition, special forces, paratroopers and Apache helicopters were deployed.
“Motion above the bridge was halted until the Egyptian military helicopters attacked the spot, and succeeded in destroying the [jihadists’] rockets,“ he said adding that the rockets destroyed were made in Iran.
The jihadists themselves
say the attack came from Israel:
An al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group active in the Sinai Peninsula says its fighters were the target of a rare Israeli drone strike into Egyptian territory on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, in a statement posted on a militant website Saturday, said that four of its members were killed in the Friday attack as they were preparing a cross-border rocket strike into Israel. It said the dead were from Egyptian Sinai tribes. The group said the rocket squad’s leader escaped.
Egyptian security officials speaking anonymously had initially said on Friday that a drone firing from the Israeli side of the border had killed five suspected militants. The conflicting death tolls could not be reconciled.
Later, an Egyptian military source denied that the Israeli air force had carried out any raids inside Egypt. The Egyptian military official said the Egyptian borders are a “red line.”
Their
Arabic statement is much more interesting, as they make it clear that their targets and enemies are Jews, not "Zionists":
The group "Mujahedeen of Jerusalem," which is active in the Sinai, said in a statement, "four of the mujahideens were targeted by a Zionist drone," denouncing the "cooperation and complicity of the Egyptian army with the Jews in their offensive."
The statement said, "We mourn... the Mujahideen in the name of Allah, the martyrdom of a group of the finest fighters in the Sinai, four of the best of the group Ansar Jerusalem...while carrying out their jihad duty against the Jews, the process of firing rockets at Jewish settlements near the borders of the occupied territories."
The spokesman added, "What triggers grief in our hearts is the emergence of cooperation and complicity of the Egyptian army with the Jews in their crime... Is there any betrayal of the public larger than that? The Egyptian army allowing Zionist drone aircraft to breach the Egyptian border again and again, ...and cooperation and coordination with the Jews for the bombing and killing of the mujahideen?"
He continued that "[It is one thing to have] treason in the Egyptian army and employment of Jewish Americans in exchange for protecting the country's borders and fighting enemies, but now it became an army mission to protect the borders of the Jews and the achievement of U.S. interests and Zionism in this country, even if that means killing people by themselves or in cooperation and coordination with the Jews, for they are death."
While it was probably an Israeli strike, the jihadist group is clearly trying to embarrass the Egyptians - none of them are real witnesses to the attack itself, and no one saw who shot the actual missiles.
