Friendly fire in Sheikh Zuwayed

On Sunday morning, a six-year-old boy was killed when a rocket fell on a house in a Sheikh Zuwayed village. Four others were injured in the accident.

According to Aswat Masriya, which quoted an anonymous military source, it was a Hawm Rocket that fell on a house in the Shallaq village in Sheikh Zuwayed. Meanwhile, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the accident happened during an Apache raid on some villages in Sheikh Zuwayed, without specifying the type of rocket that fell on the house.

There have been no official statements on the matter.

This is the third accident of its kind to occur in a span of two weeks. On July 25, a Hawn Rocket fell on another house in a village south of Sheikh Zuwayed, killing four people, two of whom are 8 and 10-year-old siblings and a pregnant woman. Six other members of the same family were injured.

Military sources denied that the rocket belonged to them, saying the military never used Hawn Rockets in North Sinai. The sources claimed the rocket was fired by terrorists targeting army forces.

The North Sinai governor issued compensation for the victims’ families: LE10,000 for the dead and LE5,000 for the injured.

This comes a day following the killing of a Central Security Forces leader and Armed Forces leader by unknown assailants in Rafah.

On July 28, the first day of Eid, a missile fell in another village south of Sheikh Zuwayed, killing a nine-year-old girl and injuring another person. Security sources claim the missile was targeting a patrol car, however no official statements were made on the matter.

Ahmed Abu Deraa, an Al-Masry Al-Youm correspondent in North Sinai told Mada Masr that eyewitnesses and residents of those villages confirm that these missiles are fired by the military by accident, but that the military is yet to take responsibility for them.

“The terrorists have no motive to attack,” he said.

Abu Deraa concluded that these attacks were random and accidental.

Getting caught in the crackdown on extremists in Sinai amid the ongoing war on terrorism is nothing to children.

Last year, on July 10, 2013, the Armed Forces’ spokesperson announced on Facebook that then commander of the Second Army, Major General Ahmed Wasfi, was attacked as gunmen in a vehicle opened fire on his vehicle resulting in an exchange of fire between security and the perpetrators.

Security was able to capture the vehicle, inside which an injured little girl was found. The girl died as soon as she arrived to Arish Hospital.

The post was removed shortly after, amid conflicting reports from Sheikh Zuwayed about the incident, and claims that the vehicle in question didn’t carry gunmen but simply refused to stop. Testimony by the head of the independent Al-Shorouk newspaper’s Sinai bureau, Mostafa Singer, posted on his Facebook page claimed that the Armed Forces’ version of the story is not true.

“After hearing several testimonies I can say that the Armed Forces’ story is not true,” he wrote, “Eyewitnesses confirm that the military fired at the vehicle when it refused to stop and that Ahmed Wasfi’s convoy wasn’t targeted at all.”

Eyewitness accounts, coupled with Singer’s testimony, were enough to explain the removal of the post from the Armed Forces’ Facebook page. The Armed Forces remained tightlipped on the incident afterwards, raising more questions around the story.