Israeli media is reporting that five Hamas members have been arrested in the Northern Sinai in connection with the killing of 25 Egyptian policemen. According to a Times of Israel report:
Hamas
August 28, 2013 Five members of Hamas were arrested in northern Sinai recently for involvement in the killing of 25 Egyptian policemen, Arab media reported on Wednesday.
Quoting ‘a knowledgeable source’ in the city of El-Arish, the Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that 11 suspects were arrested four days ago near the border city of Rafah. Three of the suspect are local residents, three carry foreign passports, and five are Hamas members, the daily claimed.
The arrests come a little over a week after 25 off-duty Egyptian officers were killed execution-style near the city of Al-Arish, after armed men ordered them off the bus they were riding en route to their base. The August 19 attack was widely viewed as retaliation for the violent government dispersal of two pro-Brotherhood sit-ins in Cairo five days earlier.
The Egyptian military stepped up its crackdown on Islamist groups in the Sinai after the July 3 ouster of president Mohammed Morsi, who hailed from the Brotherhood.
Egypt’s military establishment has long accused Hamas of involvement in the security unrest plaguing Egypt in northern Sinai. Morsi was recently indicted for collusion with Hamas to harm Egyptian vital interests, among other charges.
The source told the daily of rumors circulating in the region claiming that the Egyptian army attacked a camp run by Palestinian extremists, in which Palestinians and Egyptians were trained to carry out terror attacks in Sinai and across Egypt.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zuhri on Wednesday called the report on the arrest ‘lies,’ claiming they were aimed at delegitimizing the Gaza Strip and Palestinian resistance to justify Egypt’s destruction of smuggling tunnels and the near-complete closure of the Rafah border crossing.”
The Hamas charter says that it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine” and soon after Hamas took over the Gaza strip, Muslim Brotherhood representatives traveled to Gaza from Egypt through the newly-opened border to review Hamas military formations. A Hamas journalist has acknowledged the role that the “international Muslim Brotherhood” has played in providing funds for the purchase of weapons and Hamas is known to be supported financially and politically by the global Muslim Brotherhood. A Muslim Brotherhood spokesman revealed that a coalition of London-based Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, were behind the mass demonstrations staged to protest Israeli actions in the 2008 Gaza war and the Global Muslim Brotherhood and its Turkish affiliates were also intimately involved, along with the Turkish government, in the June 2010 Gaza flotilla that was involved in a violent altercation with Israeli naval forces.
