Explosives cache found in Egypt
2008-07-11 19:12
El-Arish - Egyptian authorities on Friday found 250kg of explosives in the Sinai desert which they believed were probably destined for the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, said a security official.
The cache was found in the Sheikh Zuwayed region near the border town of Rafah after a tip-off from local Bedouins who said smugglers were using the area to hide explosives, the official said.
The explosives "were probably destined for the Gaza Strip", the official said, adding that no arrests had been made. On Thursday, another cache containing a small amount of TNT was found in the Sinai Peninsula.
Both Israel and the United States accused Egypt of not doing enough to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip, but Cairo rejected this and said it regularly uncovered cross-border tunnels used by smugglers.
In the Egypt-mediated negotiations that led to the June 19 Gaza truce between the Jewish state and the Islamist Hamas, Israel demanded more vigorous Egyptian action against those trafficking in military contraband.