South Front
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The Egyptian military has foiled an attempt to fire rockets from the Sinai Peninsula at Israel, Al Jazeera reported late on April 8, citing Hebrew media reports.
According to the reports, a multiple rocket launcher set up in an unspecified part of Sinai to fire in the direction of the southern Israeli port town of Eilat was uncovered and dismantled by the Egyptian military. Neither Cairo, nor Tel Aviv have commented on these claims yet.
The alleged rocket launch attempt from Sinai was reported amid a rare attack from southern Syria at the Golan Heights. Two salvos of rockets hit the Israeli-occupied region between April 8 and 9. In response, Israel launched a series of strikes on military positions in the Syrian governorates of Daraa and al-Qunitra.
It is possible that the attempt was orchestrated by Palestinian armed factions in Gaza, who maintain some influence in Sinai, or by local sympathizers in the peninsula as a response to the April 5 Israeli Police assault on al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem city, in which hundreds of Palestinians were arrested.
The assault provoked rocket attacks by Palestinian factions from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon. The attack from Syria was also reportedly a response.
Another possibility is that ISIS cells in Sinai were behind the rocket attack attempt. The terrorist group launched rockets at southern Israel from the peninsula around six years ago.
The Egyptian military and security forces have been battling ISIS terrorists as well as drug and weapons traffickers in Sinai for more than a decade. Despite this, the situation in the peninsula, which is located between the strategic Suez Canal and the border with Israel, remains unstable.
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