Was Today's Suicide Bombing in Egypt Part of Planned Second Wave? (updated)
By Andrew Cochran
The newswires reported a twin suicide bombing outside of a multinational force base in Egypt, just 10 miles from the Israeli border near Rafah, in which only the suicide bombers died. But an attempt today by terrorists to cross the Karni border with a car bomb, which occurred just prior to the Rafah attack, is raising speculation among Palestinian security forces and in the Israeli press that the two events today were linked. The Karni border attempt was thwarted by Palestinian forces at that point, with an exchange of fire that wounded terrorist and Palestinian security personnel. A "large amount of explosives" were found in that car. "YNet News" reports this: "Palestinian security sources claim that there is a direct connection between the attack in Karni and Rafah. Palestinian security forces began investigating the two incidents, despite the fact that the second terror attack took place on Egyptian territory. A Palestinian source said that the PA was not ruling out the possibility that an extremist terrorist organization - one of al-Qaeda's offspring - is responsible for the two incidents. The source said that Palestinian security forces are continuing to scan the Karni area after the occupants of the vehicle, who escaped." And another "Ynet News" article quotes a "senior IDF official" saying, "We can't rule out that an internal Palestinian conflict may have caused the Palestinians to thwart the attack."
Moreover, "The Jerusalem Post" quotes an Egyptian Interior Ministry official as tying both events today to the Dahab attack: "The people who made the attack in Dahab and this attack are the same people. They are not al-Qaeda. They are Beduin. We don't know if they are all from the north." Another Israeli news source cites Egyptian sources for a report that Egyptian security forces have identified 3 Bedouins, two of whom traveled from Cairo the day before the bombing, as the suicide bombers who carried out Monday's attack.
So, were today's Karni and Rafah events a second wave planned by the Dahab terrorists to occur across the Sinai border against Palestinians and Israelis? UPDATE: The Egyptian Interior Minister goes even further, saying that this week's bombings, including today's events, were linked to the 2005 Sharm el-Sheik and 2004 Taba terror attacks. Quoting: "The information we have indicates that (the perpetrators) are Sinai Bedouin, and the latest operations are linked to the previous attacks."
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