Armed Forces sergeant killed in raid near Sheikh Zuwayed, 2 construction workers injured in New Rafah explosion

In recent months residents who have long been displaced from their homes to the west and south of Sheikh Zuwayed, once a concentration point in the military-militant conflict, have been allowed to return to inspect their war-torn properties.

However, a string of security incidents continues to plague the area, the most recent of which came this week when an Armed Forces sergeant was killed during a raid and two construction workers were injured when an explosive device detonated.

Armed Forces Sargent Abdullah Saeed Farhat was killed during a raid on Tuesday to the south of the city of Sheikh Zuwayed, according to a source from the Union of Sinai tribes, which also took part in the operation.

The source told Mada Masr that Farhat was a member of a special forces division. Local press outlets covered Farhat’s funeral in his hometown in Monufiya on Wednesday.

Two kilometers outside Sheikh Zuwayed, to the southeast of the city, two construction workers were injured when an explosive device detonated as they were using an excavator while working on the New Rafah development project.

A medical source at Arish Hospital, where the two workers were transported, told Mada Masr that one of the men had their hand amputated and the other was seriously injured. Both are still receiving treatment.

It is not clear when the device was planted, but militants in North Sinai have previously planted explosives when they retreated from an area.

New Rafah is an urban development project being built around 7 km from the border with Gaza. The project was announced after the military established a buffer zone in 2014 to prevent arms smuggling and “eradicate terrorism,” displacing at least 1,156 families, with more being displaced in the subsequent fighting in the areas between the border and Sheikh Zuwayed. The New Rafah project can house around 10,000 families.

Fighting in the area has largely subsided, and the government has begun allowing residents to return to inspect their homes.

In late January, officials allowed some displaced residents to return to their villages to the west of Sheikh Zuwayed region to inspect their homes, but many of the returnees have found their houses uninhabitable and their farmland unusable.

In November, residents of the villages of Abul Arag and Dahir to Sheikh Zuwayed’s south were also allowed to return.

The residents, who have been displaced for as long as seven years, are still waiting for the government to assess the damages and determine what will be paid in compensation for the homes and farms they hope to repair and use once again.

However, Tuesday’s killing of Farahat and the explosion in New Rafah are the latest signs that the conflict is not fully in the past.

In December, in the first visit by a civilian official from the governorate to the area in nearly eight years, the governor of North Sinai visited a village to the south of Sheikh Zuwayed, a month after residents began returning. In a show of normalcy, the governor walked about the village without a military detail.

However, one day later, militants infiltrated a nearby village and killed an armed civilian who had been assigned to guard the area.