EL-ARISH – A car bomb followed by fierce gunfire was unleashed on a military checkpoint in northeastern Sinai Peninsula on Friday, leaving 10 Egyptian security troops including a special forces colonel dead and wounding at least 20, authorities said.
An 18-year-old Israeli died Saturday in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Islamist militants killed 12 members of Egypt’s military in North Sinai province and wounded six more in an attack on a checkpoint on Friday, the military said, adding that it killed 15 militants in return.
Israel has conducted numerous drone strikes against terrorists in Egyptian territory in recent years, Bloomberg quoted a former senior Israeli official as saying on Monday.
The Russian plane crash in Sinai on October 13, which left 224 people dead, is still preoccupying intelligence organizations around the world.
Salman Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” opens with the explosion of an airliner named Bostan, a Farsi word that refers to the Garden of Eden.
Russia’s security chief, FSB head Alexander Bortnikov, acknowledged that terrorism downed a Metrojet flight which crashed in the Sinai several weeks ago, killing 224 people – long after Western intelligence declared that terrorist involvement was ‘probable.’
A British passenger jet had a narrow escape when it came close to being hit by a rocket as it came in to land at Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh in August, British media reported on Saturday.
At least 30 soldiers were killed after suspected Islamist militants attacked five military posts in Egypt’s North Sinai area on Wednesday, security sources and witnesses said.