Haaretz wrote: Egypt: Gaza militants initiated Eilat, Aqaba rocket attack
Hamas says Egypt's claims, which do not specifically name the Islamist organization, are 'unprofessional and politically motivated.'
By News Agencies and Haaretz
The deadly rocket attacks on Israel and Jordan's Red Sea ports were carried out by the militant Palestinian Hamas group operating from Egypt, an Egyptian official said Wednesday after days of denials.
Immediately after a barrage of rockets crashed into the sea near Israel's Eilat resort town and killed a taxi driver in Jordan's Aqaba port, Egyptian officials had strongly denied they had come from its soil.
The security official said Hamas had fired seven rockets, including one which misfired and left debris near a security facility in the town of Taba.
The attackers fired Soviet-style Grad rockets of the type used by militants in Lebanon and Gaza, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The rockets hit a narrow area of the Red Coast where the Israeli and Jordanian ports are located side by side. One person was killed and four people wounded.
It was the second such attack this year, after a similar volley in April that
Israel also said was fired from Egypt.
Aqaba and Eilat are more than 300 kilometers from Hamas' stronghold in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier Wednesday, an unnamed Egyptian source told Egypt's state MENA agency that "preliminary information that the security has received indicates that Palestinian factions from the Gaza Strip are behind that operation,"
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri criticised the Egyptian claim, calling it politically motivated. "This sounds silly and does not depend on any actual reasonable evidence," he said.
Egypt earlier denied the rockets came from Sinai. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
MENA quoted Egyptian security sources on Monday as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai since the largely empty, desert region was very mountainous.
"Egytian statements are conflicting," Abu Zuhri said. "We doubt the credibility of these statements and believe they are unprofessional and politically motivated."
Earlier on Wednesday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, when asked if he was convinced the rockets were fired by Hamas, told Israel Radio there could be a link.
"I do not want to say convinced, but it could be that there is a link between Hamas and this firing -- perhaps not people who are part of Hamas in Gaza, perhaps a link that is a little more indirect," he said.
Egypt has not indicated where the rockets were launched from, but said it was scaling up the investigation.
"Egypt will not accept the use of its land by any party to harm Egyptian interests," the Egyptian security source said.
In 2005, rockets were fired at U.S. warships in Aqaba but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was behind the attack.
Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through Sinai and killed three people at a bakery in Eilat, a tourist resort on Israel's southern tip which has only rarely been touched by the Middle East conflict.
Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace treaties with Israel. Those relations were frayed by Israel's crackdown a decade ago on a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Although Egypt had initially denied that the rockets were fired from its territory, security forces in Israel were certain that the rockets came from Sinai, as has happened in the past.
A number of terrorist groups are operating in the Sinai peninsula and are busy with smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip and efforts to penetrate into Israel.
Among the groups operating in the Sinai are those with links to Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaida and other global Jihadi groups.
A senior IDF source said yesterday that the rockets were meant to "embarrass Egypt."
Israel's long border with Egypt is relatively unguarded compared to the electric fences and advanced surveillance systems surrounding the Gaza Strip.
The presence of terrorist groups in the Sinai is one of the reasons for the serious travel warning issued by Israel's Counter Terrorism Unit against Israelis traveling to Sinai and Egypt.
Senior IDF sources stressed that in the past year there has been significant improvement in the coordination activities with the Egyptian and Jordanian armed forces, but they also note that on the Egyptian side there is still some hesitation to confront the gangs in the peninsula head on.
Older articles on the attacks from Monday:
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/jordan-man-killed-after-5-rockets-strike-eilat-aqaba-1.305479?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.216%2C2.217%2C wrote: Jordan man killed after 5 rockets strike Eilat, Aqaba
Jordan, Israeli police say rockets were launched from Egypt's Sinai by Islamist militants; unexploded rocket found in Eilat.
By Reuters and Haaretz
An unexploded rocket was located within the bounds of the southern city of Eilat, Israel Police said Monday, despite earlier reports claiming that none of the five rockets allegedly launched from the Sinai earlier in the day had landed on Israeli soil.
Jordanian and Israeli police said that rockets from Egypt's Sinai, where Islamist militants have operated in the past, hit Israel's and Jordan's Red Sea port resorts, killing a Jordanian civilian and injuring three others.
Earlier Monday, Eilat's chief of police told mayor Meir Yitzhak-Halevi that there was no evidence that any of the five rockets that were launched earlier Monday landed in the southern city, adding that it was likely that all of the rockets had likely landed on Jordanian soil.
A police spokesman later said the remains of one rocket was found in Eilat and was being examined by bomb experts.
A Jordanian interior ministry source said one of the four injured when a rocket exploded near a five-star hotel in Aqaba, later died from his injuries.
There was no word of casualties in the adjacent Israeli port and holiday resort of Eilat, police said. Aqaba and Eilat lie on the narrow northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of the Red Sea, with Sinai stretching west and south of Eilat.
Explosion by beach
Aqaba resident Ibrahim Salymehin said he heard one loud blast and when he arrived at the scene he saw at least three injured men taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance.
A crowd gathered near the scene of the explosion several hundred metres away from a five-star hotel close to the beach.
"We saw the wreckage of a taxi which was burnt, and fragmented metal scattered around the area that was cordoned off by police," another Aqaba resident, Abdullah Yashin Rawashdehd, told Reuters.
Eilat District Police Commander Moshe Cohen told Israel Radio that his forces were still trying to confirm that five explosions heard in the morning had been caused by shelling.
Two of the suspected rockets or mortar bombs appeared to have landed in the sea, while another hit Aqaba, he said.
"It's a little early to say, but it is reasonable to assume that it came from the southern area," he said, referring to neighboring Egypt, whose Sinai Peninsula has suffered
occasional violence attributed to Islamist militants.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
At least one rocket struck Aqaba on April 22, causing no casualties. Amman said the rocket had been fired from outside Jordan and Israeli media said Sinai was a possible launch point.
In 2005, rockets were fired at U.S. warships in Aqaba but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was behind the attack.
Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through Sinai and killed three people at a bakery in Eilat, which lies on Israel's southern tip and has only rarely been touched by the Middle East conflict.
Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace treaties with Israel. Those relations were frayed by Israel's crackdown in 2000 on a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Asked where the Aqaba rocket was fired from, the Jordanian source said without elaborating: "It came from the west." Experts were investigating the site to find out where the short-range rocket had been launched, he said.
Egyptian security sources were quoted by the state news agency as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai since the largely empty, desert region was very mountainous.
"The only missiles that can be fired from Sinai are mortars which can pass over these heights," General Abdel Fadeel Shousha, governor of South Sinai, said adding the area such an operation would require open space.
