The Egyptian Navy was attacked with rocket fire that damaged one of its frigates last Thursday. A militant group, calling itself Wilayat al-Sina or the “Province of Sinai,” fired a rocket it described as a “guided missile” from the shoreline along the Sinai Peninsula’s Mediterranean coast. Also known for its ties to the Islamic State, or IS, the militant group posted images on Twitter showing the rocket landing on an Egyptian Navy patrol ship and exploding in a huge fireball.
While the group claimed to have attacked and destroyed the naval vessel, killing its crew, contradictory reports surfaced. Brigadier General Mohammed Samir, speaking on behalf of the Egyptian Navy, denied there were any fatalities among the crew members of the attacked ship, and described the encounter as an exchange of fire with terrorists on shore. Egyptian security sources said that crew members had jumped overboard and some of them had been injured.
According to CNN , the Egyptian Navy vessel was attacked in the vicinity of Rafah near the Gaza border. The Australian news service reported that an Agence France-Presse photographer on the Gaza side of the border witnessed other Egyptian Navy ships rescue the crew of the vessel. Another eye-witness account came from Abu Ibrahim Mohammed, a fisherman from the Gaza strip , Daily Mail indicated. He recounted how an Egyptian Navy gunboat was attacked about a nautical mile from shore. While he did not hear the explosion, he saw the billowing fire that two smaller boats were trying to extinguish.
The origins of Wilayat al-Sina can be traced back to the Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis , which was an extremist faction in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Following the Egyptian coup d’etat which dislodged President Mohammed Morsi, along with his Muslim Brotherhood party, the extremist group engaged in skirmishes with government troops, assassinations, and kidnappings. Its designation as Province of Sinai came in November, 2014, when it swore allegiance to the Islamic State , or IS.
Last Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera, some 70 Wilayat al-Sina fighters were involved in coordinated assaults on military checkpoints and police stations across Northern Sinai. The casualty count among the attackers amounted to 22 men killed along with three vehicles destroyed. Meanwhile, the Egyptian military reported 12 of its soldiers and over 100 of the enemy killed in the clashes.
According to the BBC , the Province of Sinai has branded its media and Twitter accounts “to reflect its new IS affiliation.” Thus has Wilayat al-Sina been able to show images of the Egyptian Navy being attacked by a “guided missile,” online.
[Image via AFP / Getty Images]
