North Sinai Governorate is one of the governorates of Egypt. It is located in the north-eastern part of the country, and encompasses the northern half of the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered in the north by the Mediterranean Sea, in the south by South Sinai Governorate, in the west by Port Said, Ismailia, and Suez Governorates, and in the east by the Gaza Strip in Palestine and Israel. Its capital is the city of El Arish. A governorate is administered by a governor, who is appointed by the President of Egypt and serves at the president's discretion.
The Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels are smuggling tunnels that had been dug under the Philadelphi Route along the Egypt–Gaza border. They were dug to subvert the blockade of the Gaza Strip to smuggle in fuel, food, weapons and other goods into the Gaza Strip. After the Egypt–Israel peace treaty of 1979, the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was split by this buffer zone. One part is located in the southern part of Gaza, and the smaller part of the town is in Egypt. After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Philadelphi Corridor was placed under the control of the Palestine Authority until 2007, when Hamas seized power in 2007, and Egypt and Israel closed borders with the Gaza Strip.
On 23 January 2008, Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip set off an explosion near the Rafah border crossing, destroying part of the 2003 wall. The United Nations estimates that as many as half the 1.5 million population of the Gaza Strip crossed the border into Egypt seeking food and supplies. Due to fears that militants would acquire weapons in Egypt, Israeli police went on increased alert.
Operation Eagle was an Egyptian military campaign in the Sinai Peninsula, that was launched in August 2011 to confront the Sinai insurgency. The campaign was aimed against Islamist insurgents, who had been attacking the Egyptian security forces in the Sinai and using the area as a base from which to attack Israel since early 2011. Successive Egyptian operation against insurgents in 2012, named Operation Sinai, was initially referred as the second part of Operation Eagle. It was the first in a number of campaigns to retake the Sinai from insurgents which was achieved.
Rocket attacks on the neighboring cities of Eilat, in Israel, and Aqaba, in Jordan, have been a tactic used by militants from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and organizations linked with Al-Qaeda because of the relative ease of launching rocket attacks against these two cities from adjacent desert areas. Most of these attacks target Eilat, the last attack on Aqaba was in 2010.
On August 18, 2011, a series of cross-border attacks with parallel attacks and mutual cover was carried out in southern Israel on Highway 12 near the Egyptian border by a squad of presumably twelve militants in four groups. The attacks occurred after Israel's interior security service Shin Bet had warned of an attack by militants in the region and Israeli troops had been stationed in the area. The militants first opened fire at an Egged No. 392 bus as it was traveling on Highway 12 in the Negev near Eilat. Several minutes later, a bomb was detonated next to an Israeli army patrol along Israel's border with Egypt. In a third attack, an anti-tank missile hit a private vehicle, killing four civilians. Eight Israelis – six civilians, one Yamam special unit police sniper and one Golani Brigade soldier—were killed in the multiple-stage attack. The Israel Defense Forces reported eight attackers killed, and Egyptian security forces reported killing another two.
Sheikh Zuweid is a Bedouin town in the North Sinai Governorate of Egypt near the border with the Gaza Strip. It is situated between the cities of Arish and Rafah and is 334 kilometers northeast of Cairo. It has a population of around 60,000 as of 2015.
The August 2012 Sinai attack occurred on 5 August 2012, when armed men ambushed an Egyptian military base in the Sinai Peninsula, killing 16 soldiers and stealing two armored cars, which they used to infiltrate into Israel. The attackers broke through the Kerem Shalom border crossing to Israel, where one of the vehicles exploded. They then engaged in a firefight with soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), during which six of the attackers were killed. No Israelis were injured.
The Sinai insurgency was an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, launched by Islamist militants against Egyptian security forces, which have also included attacks on civilians. The insurgency began during the Egyptian Crisis, during which the longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
On 29 January 2015, militants from the ISIL-affiliated Wilayat Sinai militant group launched a series of attacks on army and police bases in Arish using car bombs and mortars. The attacks, which occurred in more than six different locations, resulted in 44 deaths.
The following is a chronological timeline of fatal incidents during the ongoing Sinai insurgency, which was invigorated by a period of relative instability and political turmoil in Egypt, beginning with the 2011 uprising against former autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Insurgent attacks, however, intensified significantly following the July 2013 coup that ousted Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Morsi and subsequent crackdown on his supporters.
On 1 July 2015, the IS-affiliated Sinai Province militant group launched the largest scale battle the Sinai Peninsula has seen since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, killing 21 soldiers in the numerous attacks which targeted multiple Egyptian army checkpoints and the Sheikh Zuweid police station in the Sinai Peninsula. More than 100 militants were reportedly killed by the army during the battle.
Operation Martyr's Right was a military operation conducted by the Egyptian Armed Forces in cooperation with the Egyptian National Police officers, aimed at rooting out and killing jihadist militants.
The Islamic State – Sinai Province is a branch of the terrorist Islamist group Islamic State that is active in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
In July 2013, at the same time as mass protests began against the 3 July coup d'état which deposed Mohamed Morsi, and in parallel with the escalation of the already ongoing jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, pro-Muslim Brotherhood militants started violent attacks against policemen and soldiers in central and western Egypt. In the following months, new Islamist armed groups were created to reinstate Islamist rule in Egypt, like Soldiers of Egypt and the Popular Resistance Movement. Since 2013, violence in mainland Egypt has escalated and developed into a low-level Islamist insurgency against the Egyptian government.
Thirteen policemen and soldiers were killed on Saturday night, March 20, 2016, in an attack that targeted a security checkpoint in Sinai's Al-Arish. The Ministry of Interior announced that a mortar attack targeted Al-Safa checkpoint, killing two police officers, a policeman and 10 soldiers.
The October 2016 Sinai attacks was a terrorist attack on an Egyptian army checkpoint in the city of Bir al-Abed, Egypt, on 14 October 2016. A group of militants armed with assault rifles and heavier weapons attacked an Egyptian army checkpoint while mortar rounds and rockets were fired directed to a military checkpoint. In response, the Egyptian military forces killed around 15 militants following the attack. The Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai branch claimed responsibility in a statement released later the same day.
At 1:50 PM EET on 24 November 2017, the al-Rawda mosque was attacked by roughly 40 gunmen during Friday prayers. The mosque is located in the village of Al-Rawda east of the town of Bir al-Abed in Egypt's North Sinai Governorate. It is one of the main mosques associated with the Jaririya Sufi order, one of the largest Sufi orders in North Sinai. The Jaririya order is named for its founder, Sheikh Eid Abu Jarir, who was a member of the Sawarka tribe and the Jarira clan. The Jarira clan resides in the vicinity of Bir al-Abed. The attack killed 311 people and injured at least 128, making it the deadliest attack in Egyptian history. It was the second-deadliest terrorist attack of 2017, after the Mogadishu bombings on 14 October. The attack was universally condemned by many world leaders and organizations.
Comprehensive Operation − Sinai 2018 is the code name of a large counter-terrorism campaign conducted by the Egyptian Armed Forces and the Interior Ministry. The operation was initiated on February 9, 2018, and focuses on northern and central Sinai and parts of the Nile Delta. It mainly targets Islamist insurgents, as well as "other criminal activity that affects national security and stability", according to the Armed Forces press statement that announced the start of the campaign.
The Rafah terror attack was a terrorist attack conducted by the Islamic State – Sinai Province on an Egyptian Armed Forces checkpoint in Rafah in North Sinai on 7 July 2017 and resulted in the death and injury of 23 Egyptian soldiers, including the high-ranking El-Sa'ka officer, Col. Ahmed Mansi. 46 terrorists were killed and six cars of the militants were destroyed in the attack.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Ansar Bait al-Maqdis)
