Masked gunmen opened fire on an Egyptian Army checkpoint in the northern Sinai Peninsula on Sunday, killing 15 soldiers who were preparing to break their Ramadan fast. The gunmen then seized at least one armored vehicle and headed toward Israel, apparently in an attempt to storm the border, witnesses and officials said.
An Israeli military spokesman said a vehicle exploded at the border, and another was struck by the Israeli Air Force at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. Images broadcast on television showed an armored vehicle after the attack, in flames.
It was the deadliest assault on Egyptian soldiers in recent memory. There were no immediate claims of responsibility in the attack, in which seven soldiers were wounded, including three in critical condition, the Egyptian Health Ministry said. An Egyptian security official, speaking on state television, blamed Islamist militants operating in Sinai, along with militants who had crossed into Egypt from the nearby Gaza Strip.
Egyptian state media later reported that one of the gunmen had been killed and that another had been arrested. Officials said the Rafah border crossing with Gaza was closed after the attack. Clashes continued late Sunday near the border.
The killings were part of an escalation in violence for Sinai, long neglected by the government and slipping from its control. Armed groups there have frequently targeted the security forces. The problems in the region deepened after the Egyptian uprising in 2011, as police and security officers fled their posts and militants, including foreign fighters, established a presence.
The killing of the soldiers represented the first security crisis for Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi [2], who appeared on television to offer condolences to the victims’ families after meeting with senior generals and security officials.
“There’s no room to appease this treachery, this aggression and this criminality,” Mr. Morsi said. Security forces would extend “full control” over the area, he said, adding, “Sinai is safe.”
The attack was also likely to add further tension to Egypt’s troubled relationship with Israel. Israeli officials have become increasingly vocal about security lapses in the border region after periodic infiltrations, including a deadly attack by gunmen who crossed the border in June.
In a statement, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said that “the militants’ attack methods again raise the need for determined Egyptian action to enforce security and prevent terror in the Sinai,” according to The Associated Press.
Officials with Hamas, the Islamist group that governs the Gaza Strip, condemned the attack, calling it “terror.” Hamas officials said that tunnels that are used for smuggling between Egypt and Gaza had been closed in response to the attack.
A statement attributed to the Hamas Interior Ministry said, “ resistance factions are committed to fighting only against the Israeli occupation, and they launch their operations only from the Palestinian territories.”
The attack on the checkpoint began at sundown, according to witnesses who said gunmen driving three Toyota Land Cruisers fired guns at a group of about 25 soldiers and officers who were preparing to break their fast.
An unknown number of gunmen then took an armored vehicle from the base, witnesses and Egyptian security officials said.
Reports differed about what happened next. An Egyptian official said some gunmen abandoned an armored vehicle near the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Egypt and Gaza after Israeli soldiers fired on it. Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said on Twitter that seven militants were killed. At the checkpoint after the attack, blood and bread mixed on the ground. The dead included at least one officer, according to security officials.
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