Egyptian forces destroy arms smugglers’ vehicles on Libya border

An Egyptian security officer guards a courthouse in Cairo in a file photo. (AP)

CAIRO: Egyptian military jets destroyed 10 vehicles carrying weapons, ammunition and smuggled goods near the country’s western desert border with Libya, the army said.
Egypt’s porous border with Libya has long been a headache for security forces as weapons flow across the frontier, but an attack on police last month claimed by a new militant group has highlighted the security challenges in the western desert.
“The air force dealt with them and destroyed them completely and killed all the elements inside,” the army statement said, without giving a date of the operation.
Egypt’s security forces are battling Daesh insurgency in the northern Sinai region, where militants have killed hundreds of police and troops since 2014 when attacks there started to increase.
Earlier, medical and security sources said on Friday in the country said that suspected militants shot dead at nine truck drivers in Sinai when they targeted a transport convoy, setting the vehicles on fire.
Two security sources in Al-Arish, the area capital, said armed men attacked the convoy, which was carrying coal to a cement factory.
The bodies of the truck drivers, all shot to death, were taken to the morgue of Suez public hospital, four medical sources said.
A military spokesman said there was no official statement. An Interior Ministry official did not respond to a request for information.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
“They have threatened us repeatedly, asking that we don’t work for the army’s companies. We informed the factory management of the threats and asked them for more protection,” one local truck driver, Ismail Abdel-Raouf, told Reuters.
A home-grown militant group, Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, declared allegiance to Daesh in 2014 and has since tried to spread outside the peninsula by targeting Christians with attacks on churches on the mainland.
President Abdel-Fatah El-Sisi, who presents himself as a bulwark against militants in the Middle East, has said Daesh fighters might try to enter Libya and Egypt after their defeats in Iraq and Syria.