Egypt arrests group it says plotted Suez attacks
Maggie Michael, AP, Jul 9 2009
Egyptian authorities arrested 25 people on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil pipelines and ships in the Suez Canal, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The group, which Egypt said had links to al-Qaida, was made up of two dozen Egyptians, most of them engineers and technicians, and their Palestinian leader. “They believe in takfiri and jihadi thought,” the ministry statement said, adding that the group planned to use explosives rigged with mobile phone-activated detonators against shipping in the Suez Canal, having learned about explosives from al-Qaida militants on jihadi Web sites, and that one of the suspects in the case crossed into the Gaza Strip to meet up with the Palestinian Army of Islam group, to receive instructions on attacking vital and important targets in Egypt. A group by that name did once operate in Gaza, but was later dismantled by Hamas. Also Thursday, a security official in northern Sinai said 700 kg of TNT destined for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip was found during a search of a storage area outside the city of el-Arish in the northern Sinai Peninsula. The official said no arrests were made.
