ISIS may have seized weapons from interdicted shipment to Hamas
Weapons that survived an Egyptian strike on an arms convoy heading to Gaza may have reached the Islamic State's Sinai affiliate and used in a massive operation against Egyptian forces.
Hamas believes a shipment of arms to Gaza that was interdicted by Egypt could have fallen into the hands of the Islamic State, Ynet has learned.
A recent major-scale Egyptian operation to thwart the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip may have had an unintended consequence.
A few days after the operation against a convoy of Gaza-bound arms, fighters in Sinai from Ansar Beit al Maqdis, a group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State nearly a year ago, mounted a large scale attack against Egyptian security forces in the peninsula using weapons similar to those seen in the shipment.
These ties included the transfer of ISIS fighters wounded in the fighting with Egyptian forces to Gaza's Shifa hospital for medical treatment and the transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hamas to ISIS in Sinai in exchange for the smuggling of raw materials used in the strip's domestic weapons manufacturing.
