The Islamic State affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has seized a weapons shipment that included a number of Kornet missiles, the Russian-made advanced anti-tank laser-guided weapon system. The shipment was making its way from Iran to Palestinian terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida.
A security source in Kuwait told the paper that the shipment is the largest seized by IS and included other GPS-guided weaponry. The source said a local IS commander was refusing to cooperate with Hamas and transfer the weapons, as cited by Hebrew-language news site Walla.
Earlier this month, as part of widening tensions that threatened to spill into another all-out war between Hamas and Israel, terrorists in Gaza fired a Kornet missile at an Israeli bus near the border, seriously injuring an IDF soldier who was on board at the time. Dozens of other soldiers had previously been on the bus and exited moments before the missile struck.
Iran, an arch-foe of Israel, has supported Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, most notably Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Its ties with Hamas, previously close, have thawed in recent months, following years of tensions that began at the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011 when Hamas criticized Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran.
The tensions between IS in Sinai and Hamas have often turned deadly. Last year, a suicide bomber allegedly linked to IS killed a Hamas guard in southern Gaza along the border with Egypt, in a rare attack against the Islamists. And earlier this year, IS in Sinai, also known as Sinai Province, declared “war” on Hamas and called on its members to attack the Palestinian group in a gruesome video that showed the execution of a member who allegedly smuggling weapons to Hamas.
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