by debkaFile
President Abdel-Fatteh el-Sisi personally approved this extreme measure, despite its inevitable political fallout
The Egyptian air force has bombed six terrorist
targets in Sinai and, for the first time in its modern military history,
in the famous Nile Delta. Reporting this on Sunday, March 4, the
Egyptian military spokesman Col. Tamer Rifai did not specify which areas
were struck in the two regions, or which terrorist organizations were
targeted. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the very fact that
the Egyptian military has expanded its counter-terror campaign from the
Sinai desert into an area in northern Egypt testifies to the rising
threat posed by the Islamic State and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
The Nile Delta, Egypt’s richest agricultural region
for 5,000 years, has a population of 39 million, most of them living in
the main towns of Alexandria and the Cairo conurbation and sparsely
spread out in between. It fans out across 240 sq.km, from Alexandria in
the west, through Port Said in the east and up to the Mediterranean in
the north.
President Abdel-Fatteh el-Sisi personally approved
this extreme measure, despite its inevitable political fallout, in order
to cut down on the terrorist peril hanging over his regime before Egypt
goes to the polls on March 26-28 to choose its president. In the four
years since he seized power from the Muslim Brotherhood’s President
Mohamed Morsi, internal security in Egypt, instead of improving, has
gone from bad to worse. Although El-Sisi’s re-election is in the bag, in
the absence of any other serious contenders, his personal and political
standing is at stake.
“Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018″ was officially
launched on Feb. 9 for “the comprehensive confrontation of terrorist
and criminal elements and organizations in north and middle Sinai and
other areas in the Nile Delta and the desert areas west of the Nile
valley.” The military spokesman now reports that, so far, 16 troops and
10 terrorists were killed in the operation and 245 detained.
On March, Amnesty International issued a statement based on an Egyptian military video accusing the Egyptian air force of using US supplied Mk 118 cluster munitions in North Sinai.
debkaFile
Source: https://www.debka.com/egypt-conducts-first-ever-air-strikes-nile-delta-terrorist-targets/
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