Armed Beduin attack Sinai checkpoint

Tribesmen seize 11 Egyptian border police; IDF deploying remote-control guns on Gaza border.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN, AP
bedouins eygpt 248 88 ap (photo credit: AP [file])
bedouins eygpt 248 88 ap
(photo credit: AP [file])
The IDF is monitoring an ongoing feud between Sinai Beduin and Egyptian policemen, although it is not overtly concerned about the situation at this stage. Armed Beduin attacked a security checkpoint Tuesday in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and seized 11 policemen in a restive area near the border with Israel, an Egyptian security official said. In the clashes, Egyptian police shot and killed three Bedouin men, security and local government officials said. The Beduin tribesmen were angered by a police shooting a day earlier that killed a suspected Beduin smuggler in the area. Smugglers use the border area to send weapons, drugs and other items into the Gaza Strip, often through underground tunnels. Traffickers also ferry African migrants seeking to enter Israel. The Beduin tribesmen raided a security checkpoint Tuesday and dragged the 10 policemen and a senior officer into getaway cars in a town 10 kilometers from the Israeli border, the security official said. In the incident a day earlier, police were chasing two Beduin smugglers in a car and shot and killed one of them, he said. The other man was wounded. Tribesman Moussa Abu Freh said Beduin had taken over several other checkpoints near the Egyptian-Israel border. Meanwhile, defense officials say the military has deployed remote-control machine guns along its border with the Gaza Strip. The system allows female soldiers watching television screens in control rooms in the rear to spot targets and open fire. In the past, lookouts had to call in ground forces to intercept militants. The IDF is shifting to more unmanned weaponry along the Gaza frontier in an attempt to protect soldiers. An Israeli company recently developed an unmanned vehicle to patrol the border. The military had no immediate comment.