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n the first such attack of the 10-week-old conflict in Yemen, Shiite Muslim rebels early Saturday launched three Scud missiles toward a large Saudi air base, the insurgents reported. The Saudis acknowledged the firing of one missile, which they said was shot down. The episode came as the United Nations is struggling to bring the two sides together for talks that are envisioned to begin June 14. Both sides appear to be seeking to shore up their gains in advance of any negotiations. The Houthis’ Masirah television reported the missile firings, which Saudi Arabian reports said were aimed at the...

Rocket alerts sounded in Ashkelon and the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council on Saturday evening. Residents reported hearing at least one explosion. The Israel Defense Forces deployed Iron Dome missile defense batteries in several locations in the south this week following several incidents of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip toward Israeli territory.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Israel's defense establishment knows that the recent "trickles" of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel must be stopped before it becomes a routine occurrence. But while Israel has officially placed the responsibility for Wednesday night's rocket fire on Gaza's leadership, Hamas is having a hard time reining in Salafi and jihadist groups in the Strip. Minutes after Wednesday night's rocket fire, Hamas operatives rushed from their headquarters to find shelter, fearing Israeli retaliation strikes, which came early Thursday morning with as three militant training camps were targeted. A senior Hamas official sent...

Intelligence gathered by Egypt and Israel attest to the former Ansar Bait al-Maqdis - now reborn as the Islamic State’s operational arm in Sinai – being well into advanced preparations for a large-scale terrorist offensive targeting Israel forces manning the Egyptian frontier, along with a string of Egyptian targets across Sinai up to and including the Suez Canal and Cairo. According to DEBKAfile’s counter-terrorism sources, the Islamist group was so elated by the outcome of its multiple attacks on Jan. 29, which left at least 40 Egyptian soldiers dead and more than 100 injured in Sinai and Suez towns, that...

Critics who think Israel is taking a heavy-handed approach in destroying Hamas terror tunnels should see what Egypt has in mind. Facing the same type of underground routes out of Gaza that allowed terrorists to mount attacks on Israel, Egypt is considering creating a huge, 1,000-meter buffer zone in the Sinai Peninsula – they have already evicted 10,000 people in the process of clearing the first 500 meters -- and digging a deep-water trench that would flood any future efforts to carve subterranean routes for smuggling weapons and terrorists in and out of Gaza. And unlike the fierce resistance and...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction has exposed that Hamas is running a human trafficking network, smuggling Gaza residents to Europe for $2,000 to $3,500 per person. The charges come following reports that dozens of Palestinian Arabs drowned last week after leaving Gaza for Egypt, where they boarded an ill-fated ship bound for Europe that never reached its goal, reports Kol Yisrael (Israel Radio). Apparently Hamas used its hundreds of smuggling tunnels into the Sinai Peninsula to funnel the would-be immigrants out of Gaza and into Egypt; while an Egyptian siege limited the usage of those smuggling tunnels,...

Jewish Home party chairwoman MK Ayelet Shaked responded Monday morning to reports that the Egyptian government had offered the Palestinian Authority a state extending from Gaza through the Sinai Peninsula, and called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to take it seriously. Aiming a barb at the Israeli Left, she said the initiative proved how out of touch they were. "If the report is indeed correct, the president of Egypt has managed to understand what the Left in Israel has refused to understand for decades." She asserted that the solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian "needs to be regional,...

Egyptians protest after homes demolished to create buffer zone; Hamas official says Egyptian move could "solidify the blockade." Egyptian soldiers keep guard in Sinai Photo: REUTERSThe Hamas government said Sunday it was "surprised" to hear that Egypt is planning to create a buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip. Ehab Ghissin, spokesman for the Hamas government, said that there should be no buffer zones "between brothers and friendly countries." Ghissin expressed hope that the Egyptian move would not "solidify the blockade" and increase the suffering of the people in the Gaza Strip. He called for establishing a free...

At least nine Islamist militants have been killed in a major offensive by the Egyptian army in Sinai, security officials have said. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that tanks and troops, backed by Apache helicopters, had struck the militants in towns along the Gaza Strip border. The operation is said to be the biggest of its kind in recent years in Sinai. Meanwhile, Egyptian soldiers defused mortars and other explosives found on a railway line near the Suez Canal. There have been frequent attacks on pipelines and security forces since the uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak set off an explosion Thursday, launching an ambitious and controversial plan to make the Western Desert bloom with water channeled from the Nile River. When the canal is done, if all goes according to plan, water will wind its way 190 miles (310 kilometers) across the Western Desert to irrigate 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) of virgin land. And, if all goes according to plan, the newly irrigated land will be populated by hundreds of thousands of people. The explosion Thursday was the first step in the construction on a pumping station that Egypt claims will be...

An Egyptian general is blaming Hamas and outsiders for funding 'global' jihadi groups in the Sinai Peninsula, including those that carried out Sunday's terror attack against an Egyptian army base, reported Arabic press agency al-Sharq al-Awsat. Terrorists ambushed and killed 16 Egyptian soldiers, then tried to drive hijacked military vehicles into Israel to continue the attack. Israeli military forces intercepted them, killing several terrorists. General Gamal Mazloum's comments, picked up by the Times of Israel, squarely contradict attempts by Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to blame Israel for the attack. They also demonstrate an Egyptian awareness of Hamas' long-term...

Israelis urged to return home for fear that peninsula will become launching pad for terror attacks as police abandon posts, facing increasing violence. Concern is mounting in Israel over reports that the Egyptian police force has abandoned the Sinai Peninsula in face of growing Beduin violence, and that the territory will turn into a breeding ground for global jihad. According to information that has arrived in Israel, Egyptian police authorities have abandoned dozens of police stations throughout the peninsula after they were attacked by Beduin armed with missiles and assault rifles. This concern was behind Israel’s decision two weeks ago...

Israeli officials are nervously watching events in Egypt's sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula, worried that a power vacuum in Cairo and the withdrawal of police forces will embolden the Bedouin tribes who help smuggle weapons to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. In a sign of the rising tensions, Bedouin in the northern Sinai on Friday used rocket-propelled grenades to attack the headquarters of Egypt's state security in El Arish, a town close to Egypt's border crossing into Gaza, according to witnesses. Israel's fear is that with Egypt's police having all but disappeared from the peninsula—after police were asked to step...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt plans to build a $1 billion tunnel under the Suez Canal at Port Said and will begin seeking finance as soon as the designs are completed, Al-Akhbar newspaper on Monday quoted the investment minister as saying. The tunnel, to be built 19 km (12 miles) south of the Canal's northern entrance, will have 3 passageways, one for rail and two for cars, the newspaper quoted Mahmoud Mohieldin as telling a conference in Dahab in the eastern Sinai Peninsula. The conference was called to discuss investment in the cities along the canal and in the Sinai, which...

Egypt Attacks May Indicate Emerging Sinai Bedouin Insurgency By Chris Zambelis Egypt appears to have scored a number of successes in recent weeks in its war against Islamist militants. Counter-terrorist units and police converged on an olive grove in the mountainous area known as Gabal al-Arish on the outskirts of the northern Sinai coastal town of al-Arish last week after receiving a tip that members of the obscure Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Struggle)—one of the main groups implicated in the deadly April attacks in Dahab and other strikes in Sinai—were hiding from the authorities (al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 9). After a...

JERUSALEM — Israeli military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet last week that an air force strike killed several Iranian, Lebanese and Syrian instructors sent to improve Hamas's military and missile capabilities. An Israeli soldier in an armored army vehicle after an operation in the Gaza Strip on March 2. AP/Sebastian Scheiner Yadlin said the death of the instructors marked a serious blow to the Hamas regime. The air force strike took place on Feb. 28 in which five people were killed in a truck filled with more than 100 missiles in the Gaza Strip. Officials said...

An Egyptian court on Saturday banned the armed wing of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, declaring it a "terrorist" group, a judiciary official said. Since Egypt's military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the authorities have accused Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, of aiding jihadists who have increased their attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula. Saturday's court verdict followed a complaint from a lawyer accusing the Hamas armed wing of direct involvement in "terrorist operations" in the Sinai, a court official said. The lawyer also accused the movement of using tunnels under the...

Two Christian pastors from South Sudan who traveled north to Sudan and were arrested on charges of spying could face the death penalty when their trial begins next week, according to their attorneys. Yat Michael Ruot and Peter Yein Reith, both Presbyterian pastors from the breakaway Christian nation of South Sudan, are being held by Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services on charges of undermining the constitution and espionage. Their supporters say their arrest and pending trial is just the latest effort by the militant Islamist government in Khartoum to stamp out Christianity.

About 380 migrants are taken by bus to emergency housing in and around Paris PARIS—French police dismantled a makeshift migrant camp that had popped up in the heart of the capital, the latest sign of a major influx into Europe that France and other countries are struggling to contain. About 380 migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia had set up tents under a subway bridge in northern Paris—the largest migrant camp to appear in the city in recent years, according to authorities. The migrants, including about 76 women and children, were taken by bus Tuesday to emergency housing in and...

A pair of RAF Lakenheath based USAF F-15E Strike Eagles that were bristling with live bombs and air-to-air missiles, along five KC-135R tankers, flew on a secretive and grueling 12 hour mission over the Southern Mediterranean on Monday, May 25th, Memorial Day. Multiple radio interceptors and plane spotters state that four F-15E’s, callsigns ABLE 01 through 04, took off from their home base at RAF Lakenheath laden with yellow banded (live) AIM-9M sidewinders, AIM-120 AMRAAMS and no less than seven 500lb Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). These aircraft were accompanied by five KC-135Rs tankers, callsign QUID 91 through 95, that...