Conflicting reports about Sinai blast
Earlier, explosion reported aboard small bus used by multinational force; security officials say dead, injured reported. However, U.N. official says bus damaged, but no blast occured
Conflicting reports: Egyptian security sources reported a small bus in an airport used by the multinational observation force in Sinai exploded on Monday. Other officials said at least two people were wounded in the blast, but a spokesman for the U.N. force denied a blast had occured.
“A microbus inside the airport exploded,” a security official in North Sinai said. He said he did not know the reason for the blast. A local source said the blast occurred at an airport at El -Gorah, a camp in the North of Sinai used by Multinational Force and Observers (MFO.)
However, the MFO in Egypt said one of its vehicles was damaged on Egyptian territory but noted it was not in MFO facilities and added two people in the vehicle were unharmed.
Asked if there was an explosion, MFO official Ian Baxendell told Reuters: "There was not."
The North Camp at El Gorah, which is about 20 km (13 miles) south of Sinai's Mediterranean coast, is the MFO's largest installation and site of the force commander's headquarters, the MFO's Web site said.
According to earlier reports, an explosion badly damaged a vehicle in which MFO members were leaving the airport, 15 kilometers (10 miles) from Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk.
The Multinational Force and Observers was created to help implement the 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. It comprises troops from the United States and a number of European nations who act as a peace monitoring force in the Sinai peninsula - the battlefield of three Arab-Israeli wars between 1956 and 1973.
