False alarms sounded repeatedly in southern Israel overnight Monday. The IDF is investigating the cause.
By: Aryeh Savir, World Israel News
Residents of the Eshkol Regional Council in southern Israel were awakened five times overnight Monday by sirens which later proved to be false alarms.
The IDF initially stated that at least two projectiles were fired at the Eshkol Regional Council, west of Be’er Sheva, from the Sinai Peninsula. They are now investigating the cause of the malfunction.
An Islamic State (ISIS)-linked terror group has previously fired rockets at Israel and were initially suspected.
ISIS in the Sinai area has been very active, and despite ongoing efforts to secure the area by Egypt’s military, the terrorists have perpetrated a succession of deadly attacks on Egypt’s security forces and civilians.
Experts and officials fear that ISIS’s recent loss of its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq has prompted the terror group to turn its attention to other lawless areas of the Middle East, such as the Sinai.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered his nation’s military to secure Sinai from Islamic terrorists within the next three months, using whatever force is necessary, in the wake of a recent terror attack on a mosque in the region that claimed the lives of more than 300 people.