The North Sinai Security Director seized  a shipment of advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles at dawn on Friday.

The directorate received a tip that the missiles were being secretly stored in a repository in Be’r al-Hefn — just south of Arish, the capital of North Sinai — and would be smuggled through tunnels to the Gaza Strip, said a security source.

After informing the Interior Ministry in Cairo, two assistants to the interior minster led a large formation of police in a raid on the area. Be’r al-Hefn has often been used as an illegal storage area for explosives and weapons.

"With the help of secret informants, the police found the storage site, where they found six US-made advanced ​​missiles inside large holes in the ground [that were waiting to be] smuggled to the Gaza Strip through tunnels," the source said.

He said the shipment likely originated in Libya, and that the range of the rockets was 2 km.

Edited translation from DPA