Egypt targets militants in border raid

CAIRO — The Egyptian military launched airstrikes early Wednesday in its boldest move to date to confront extremist military cells that have recently taken root in northern Sinai, from where they have attacked Israel.

Additionally, President Mohammed Morsi fired his intelligence chief Wednesday and asked his defense minister to replace the commander of Egypt’s military police.

The rare aerial bombing on Egyptian soil came two days after armed militants in the Sinai killed 16 members of Egypt’s security forces, broke through the border into Israel and attempted to launch a second attack there. The assault marked the first time Egyptian fighter planes have carried out strikes in the Sinai since the end of the country’s war with Israel in 1973.

The response was a clear, if late, acknowledgment that militants who advocate selfgovernance under Shariah law in the Sinai region could morph into an insurgency and raised questions about whether Egypt’s U.S.-funded military is equipped and trained to confront one.

Egyptian state television reported Wednesday that the overnight strikes, carried out in response to a fresh wave of attacks on checkpoints, had killed at least 20 suspected militants. Sinai residents disputed that account in interviews, saying the bombing campaign appeared to have been merely a show of force and a publicity stunt.

Ibrahim el-Meneey, a tribal leader in Sinai who acknowledges the presence of extremist militant cells in the area, said community leaders saw no evidence that anyone had been killed in Wednesday’s strikes. The only visible damage from the bombings, he said, was a charred Toyota that he described as unoccupied when it was hit.

Ahmad Abu Deraa, a local journalist, said he followed Egyptian ground troops to the bombing sites early Wednesday but saw no evidence that anyone had been killed or wounded in the strikes.

The airstrikes appear to have been carried out with the blessing of Israel, which has pushed Egypt to aggressively tackle the rise of extremism along its border. The deployment of troops and use of force in the Sinai is governed by a U.S.-brokered peace treaty between the two countries that has been in effect since 1979.

A senior Israeli official declined to say whether Israel had been asked to sign off on the strikes. “There are ongoing contacts between the two countries,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive developments.

The international military task force stationed in the Sinai, which includes a U.S. infantry battalion, issued a statement Wednesday saying that none of its troops had been hurt in the recent violence. The task force, known as the Multinational Force and Observers, said without elaborating that it was taking “extraordinary security precautions” to keep its personnel safe. Force leaders have declined this year to grant interviews about the security situation in the Sinai.

No group has taken credit for Sunday’s attack, in which a band of gunmen commandeered armored Egyptian military vehicles after killing the soldiers at an Egyptian checkpoint and used the vehicles to ram an Israeli border crossing. The attempted infiltration was thwarted by an Israeli airstrike. Information for this article was contributed by Ernesto Londono of

The Washington Post; by Kareem Fahim, Mayy El Sheikh and Alan Cowell of The New York Times; and by The Associated Press.