By Al Russell.
Tripoli, 9 August:
Ongoing clashes in the Sinai Peninsula between Egyptian security forces and Islamist militants are being fuelled by . . .[restrict]weapons smuggled from Libya, according to reports.
Violence in the region began on Sunday when 16 border guards were killed in an ambush by Islamist extremists.
Further attacks on military checkpoints on Wednesday left a number of troops wounded. The Egyptian armed forces have moved quickly to combat the uprising in what has been described as the country’s biggest military deployment since the 1979 war with Israel.
Ibrahim Al-Monaei, who has previously been arrested for smuggling weapons from Egypt to Gaza, told Al Arabiyah TV that all the weapons entering the Sinai Peninsula now are from Libya.
Saied Ateeq, an activist from the region, noted that weapons imported from Libya are easily identifiable: “The new ones are of the type used in wars and not in regular clashes” he told the broadcaster.
Although now exacerbating the conflict, Ateeq stressed that the unrest was not a result of the availability of arms. “Arms are not new to Sinai and even the increase in their numbers now is not the cause of instability” he said, blaming instead the “the security vacuum that followed the revolution” in Egypt last February.
Since the end of the Qaddafi regime last year the trafficking of arms out of Libya has burgeoned, thanks to the near-total disintegration of the country’s formal security infrastructure and the influx of arms into Libya during the uprising.
In recent months Egyptian security forces have seized several shipments of weapons that originated in this country, including one haul that consisted of over 150 missiles and rockets, as well as anti-tank grenade launchers and TNT. [/restrict]
