Militants injure 4 Egyptian officers near Israel border

EL-ARISH, Egypt — Militants attacked Egypt’s security forces and wounded four police officers in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, in the 10th day of clashes since 16 soldiers were killed in the volatile borderland near Israel and the Gaza Strip this month.

The troops were returning from an early morning raid where they had arrested two suspects in their homes when militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their convoy, a security official said.

The government troops fired back, but the attackers fled, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity. The attack occurred on the coastal road linking northern Sinai’s main city of el-Arish to the Egypt-Gaza border town of Rafah.

Senior security officials say Islamic militants were behind the Aug. 5 assault on the soldiers, the worst attack on troops from inside Egypt in living memory. They died when masked gunmen stormed their security checkpoint, mowing them down as they broke fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The attackers then stole an armored vehicle and stormed across the border into Israel, where an Israeli air strike stopped them in their tracks, killing six.

Large swaths of northern Sinai have plunged into lawlessness following the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak, and weapons smuggled from Libya have found their way into militants’ hands. The weapons and the security vacuum have fueled the rise of al Qaeda-inspired militant groups, which have staged several lowlevel cross-border attacks on Israel. The attacks prompted the military to launch an offensive in the increasingly unstable peninsula.

The killings also sped up a military and security shakeup in Cairo, as Islamist President Mohammed Morsi ordered the longtime defense minister and a number of the former ruling military council into retirement, dismissing Egypt’s intelligence chief as well.