The last 48 hours (May 7-8) have seen a major escalation of the ISIS threats against Israel, DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counterterrorism sources report. In a coordinated maneuver by all of the ISIS commands in the Middle East, the terrorist organization simultaneously released at least 10 videos that it said showed ISIS forces on their way to attack targets in Israel.
All of the videos refer to the Palestinian issue, Jerusalem and the timing of the attacks. In each one, the narrator claims the terror organization did not forget the Palestinians, and will not neglect them any more; describes Jerusalem as “a bridge to Islam”; and threatens an impending attack, saying “We’re coming, and coming very soon” accompanied by images of fighters from the ISIS affiliate in the Sinai are shown.
It was not the first time for the ISIS propaganda machine to threaten hostilities against Israel, but it was the first time for the threat to be issued simultaneously from every province or city where ISIS is located in the Middle East. The videos included ones from Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria; Mosul, the terrorist organization’s capital in Iraq; the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt; Derna in eastern Libya; and central Libya, where according to DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources ISIS controls a huge 300-kilometer area including the Mediterranean coast on the Gulf of Sidra.
Our sources report that every video contains the following sentences: “We know that the Egyptian army is being helped by Israeli intelligence and the Israeli Air Force in its war against us”; “We also know that Israel set up intelligence networks within the population of the Bedouin tribes in the Sinai”; and “From now on we will take action against Egyptian and Israeli targets as one.”
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that these comments are intended to counter efforts by the Egyptian military to establish anti-ISIS militias among the Bedouin tribes. This came after American counterterrorism experts advised the Egyptian military to operate the same way that the US operates among the Sunni tribes in western Iraq’s Anbar province, where US military instructors are setting up local militias to prevent ISIS fighters from entering or passing through areas under the tribes’ control.
Our sources report that three Bedouin anti-ISIS militias have been established in the Sinai so far: the “Sons of Sinai”, “Unit 103”; and the “Death Squad”.
Meanwhile, the ISIS affiliate in the Sinai carried out one of its boldest terrorist attacks on Sunday, May 8, killing eight Egyptian policemen including an officer, in the Cairo suburb of Helwan. Four masked terrorists with automatic weapons jumped out of a commercial vehicle that had blocked a minibus transporting the policemen, fired hundreds of bullets at the minibus, killing everyone inside, and then fled the scene. Western counterterrorism experts monitoring ISIS-Sinai estimate that it not only has the ability to carry out terrorist attacks in major Egyptian cities, but also against Israel.
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