Salafist funeral in Gaza
The counterterrorism forces of Israel, the US, Egypt and Jordan have gone on elevated terror alert ahead of the three-day Muslim festival of Eid al Adha starting Thursday night, Oct. 25, DEBKAfile reports.
They are acting on word received in the last ten days of preparations by Salafi and al Qaeda cells in Egyptian Sinai to unleash coordinated terrorist attacks on US and Egyptian targets in Sinai and across the border in Israel. The jihadis are bent on revenge for Israel’s targeted killing on Oct. 13 of Hisham Saidni and Abdullah al-Ashqar, two senior commanders of their Sinai-Gaza network, the Majlis Shura Al-Mujahideen
Israel’s IDF Sagi-512 Brigade and Shin Bet units are on guard around the Gaza Strip and Egyptian border; Egypt’s military, Interior Ministry and security forces are on high alert in Sinai; and the Multinational Force of mostly US units are on the ready at both its Sinai bases – Al-Gora near El Arish in the north and Sharm el-Sheikh in the south.
The US special forces unit posted last month on Jordan’s Syrian border was hurriedly transferred to the Red Sea port of Aqaba with a fleet of helicopters, in case the MFO comes under attack.
The Majlis Shura Al-Mujahideen is a roof organization of some 6,000 Egyptian, local Bedouin, Palestinian, Jordanian, Saudi, Yemeni and Libyan terrorists who subscribe to Al Qaeda’s jihadist philosophy. From their strongholds in central and southern Sinai, they have carried out most of the most recent spate of attacks on Israel and on Egyptian military targets in the peninsula.
