Egypt to double secured buffer zone size near Gaza

PanARMENIAN.Net - Egypt’s military said on Monday, Nov 17, that it intended to double the size of a secured buffer zone in a town bordering the Gaza Strip after discovering smuggling tunnels across the frontier that were longer than expected, the New York Times reported.

Last month, with little warning, the military began destroying hundreds of houses and other dwellings in the border town, Rafah, displacing more than a thousand families in a security zone that stretched almost 1,650 feet, or 500 meters, from the border.

The extension announced on Monday was an additional 500 meters, to allow the military to secure tunnels that reached 2,600 feet or more into Egypt, according to a military statement quoted in Al Ahram, the flagship state newspaper.

The proposed extension stretched into agricultural land where there were few houses, said a resident, Wissam al-Agha. If completed, it also seemed to mean that little of Rafah, which is only a little more than half a mile wide in places, would remain.

The Egyptian militant group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, last week released a long, graphic video of its deadly attacks that portrayed the military as poorly prepared for the fight, further unnerving officials. The video included grisly footage of an assault on a Sinai checkpoint that killed more than 31 soldiers, the highest death toll among military personnel in recent memory.

Since that attack, on Oct 24, militants have killed soldiers and police officers in at least two other attacks in Sinai. And last week, in an episode that remains shrouded in mystery, an Egyptian naval vessel came under fire from gunmen in boats in the Mediterranean, in what was believed to be the first militant attack at sea, the authorities said.

The authorities have mostly focused their attention on Gaza as a source of weapons and operational support for the attacks. Counterterrorism analysts say it is even more likely that arms are flowing over Egypt’s long, porous border with Libya.