Security sources announced that Egypt has dispatched up to 40 tanks and armored personnel carriers to North Sinai during the past two weeks in order to enhance security on the border with Gaza.
Following the outbreak of war since October 7, Egypt has built a concrete border wall up to six meters high topped with barbed wire, erected more barriers and strengthened surveillance on border sites.
RT reported that the deployment of Egyptian forces came prior to expansion of Israeli military operations towards the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, which has increased Egypt’s fears of the possibility of Palestinians seeking safety being forced to leave the Strip en masse.
The war marches on
The war in Gaza has entered its 126th day, as Rafah in the south of Gaza Strip witnessed violent bombardment, coinciding with warnings of a disastrous Israeli military operation in the area to which more than half of Gaza’s population was displaced.
Israeli warplanes bombed Rafah, adjacent to the Egyptian border on Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the army and the Ministry of Defense to submit a plan to evacuate civilians from the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu’s request comes amid Western and Egyptian warnings about the danger of Israel carrying out large-scale operations in Rafah, which is sheltering hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes as a result of the war on the Strip.
The US warned on Thursday that any Israeli military operation in Rafah, “without planning or with little thought,” would be a “disaster.”
The US State Department said, “We will not support doing something like this without serious and reliable planning because it concerns more than a million people sheltering there, and also without considering its implications for humanitarian aid and the safe departure of foreigners.”
