Islamic State fighters are digging up old Nazi mines laid during World War II in Egypt to use as IED’s against the Egyptian military.
“We’ve had at least 10 reports from the military of terrorists using old mines,” Egypt’s former landmine clearance czar told Newsweek. Experts believe northwest Egypt has nearly 17 million buried landmines, and may even be the world’s largest unexploded minefield. In March 2015, five Egyptian soldiers were killed in an IED attack that was fashioned out of an old Nazi mine by ISIS.
The mines were primarily laid in 1943 when the Allied powers battled Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Corps across North Africa. Authorities report nomadic tribesman frequently complained about the mines, and believe nearly 150 bedouins were killed or injured since 2006.
Beyond cannibalizing mines for IED material, the vast minefields also offer significant cover to ISIS and other terrorist groups operating in Egypt. The government cannot mount significant patrols in the mined areas. ISIS knows this, and hires bedouin guides who carefully walk terrorists and weapons smugglers through the mined areas without fear of capture by Egyptian authorities.
ISIS’s affiliate in Egypt is one of the terrorist group’s strongest chapters outside of Iraq and Syria. The group is likely responsible for killing everyone on board Russian Metro-jet Flight 9268 on October 31, 2015.
CIA Director John Brennan told Congress in June he estimates ISIS has nearly 1000 fighters in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Reports indicate ISIS’s Egyptian affiliate is working closely with its terrorist neighbors in the Gaza strip. Both Egypt’s defense and interior ministries have said Hamas and ISIS have coordinated attacks in the northern Sinai peninsula near the Israeli border. In late 2015, Hamas fighters reportedly spent a month in the Sinai peninsula teaching Islamic State militants how to fire anti-tank missiles.
In February 2016, Israeli General Yoav Mordechai warned that ISIS fighters had entered the Gaza strip through underground smuggling tunnels seeking medical treatment.
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