Egypt: Jihadists Used US-Made Missile to Attack Sinai Base

How Group Got US Missiles Unknown

Three soldiers were injured today when a rocket hit a military building in the Sinai Peninsula city of el-Arish, according to Egypt’s Interior Ministry. Though violence has been soaring in Sinai since the Egypt junta announced it’s offensive, termed “Operation Desert Storm,” this incident is noteworthy because the Interior Ministry report claims that the missile was a “US-made ballistic missile.”

The claim is particularly unusual because the Interior Ministry report provided specific information on its believed specifications, putting it at 168 cm long and 25 cm in diameter and saying it was fired from a “great distance.”

That doesn’t appear to exactly fit the specifications of any US missiles, and is quite a bit larger than the shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles that one would conceivably find being swapped around by militant factions, resembling more the size of something fired by a vehicle.

If the claims prove accurate, this could be a huge scandal for the US, and a big unanswered question as to how a local militant faction came by such huge US weaponry. The timing is doubly inopportune as the US is planning a massive influx of weapons to rebels in Syria, adding to the question of whether those arms will also end up getting passed around the region and end up in the hands of random factions as well.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.