Egypt Army Plans Sinai Operation after Militant Attacks Kill Three

Militants killed at least three people Monday and wounded 17 when they fired on a bus carrying workers in the North Sinai town of Al-Arish, security and medical sources said.

Military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Aly said in a statement that a "terrorist group" had been targeting a police vehicle but hit the workers' bus by mistake.

"The bus was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade near Al-Arish airport. Three people died and 17 were injured in the attack," a security official said.

A medical source confirmed the toll, adding that "many of those injuries are critical." The bus was carrying workers from a cement factory.

The attack came hours after gunmen clashed with the Egyptian army near the Israeli border.

The fighting broke out in the area of Al-Wifaq, in northern Sinai, after militants tried unsuccessfully to blow up a police vehicle with explosives.

The restive Sinai peninsula has been hit by a surge of violence since president Mohammed Morsi's ouster on July 3, with militants killing a police officer early on Friday.

A Coptic Christian man found decapitated a day earlier, while two people died in an attack on a checkpoint in the peninsula on Wednesday.

With an insurgency threatening its sensitive border with Israel, Egypt's military is preparing to go on the offensive against Sinai militants who have escalated attacks since Morsi's ouster.

A senior military official confirmed to Agence France Presse that the Egyptian army "will carry out an operation" in the Sinai, without giving further details.

The army knew the militant leaders by name and their location, he said, adding that most of the militants "live with their family, in villages".

The army would approach the operation carefully, he said, as it is keen to avoid friction with civilians, "but we don't want things to take us to a stage that affects our national security".

Analysts said the Sinai violence could be down to Islamist extremists seeking to take advantage of the political insecurity in the country after Morsi's ouster.

Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, said the attacks could be by militants already sworn to fighting the state.

Militants "who are already radical are emboldened and see it as an opportunity to move more aggressively," he said.

Hamid said there was already sympathy in the Sinai for agitation against the government.

"When there was significant anger over Morsi's ouster, they took advantage of that situation," he said.

Armed extremists in north Sinai could also exploit the military's focus on securing the political transition, Oliver Coleman, a senior risk analyst for London-based Maplecroft, said in a report.

Coleman added that "it is possible, though at this point not especially likely, that Sinai militants will link up with newly disaffected Islamists in the Nile Valley".

However, he warned it was "all the more likely if (Muslim) Brotherhood members continue to be arrested or the group is excluded from the political process".

The Egyptian army has called on the Brotherhood, the group from which Morsi hails, to participate in the political transition it has launched since ousting the Islamist president on July 3.

But the influential Islamist movement has refused and insisted on Morsi's reinstatement, accusing the army of plotting a "coup against him".

In what appeared to be a message to the Brotherhood, army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday that he hoped all political parties were aware that "the opportunity was available to all political sides", of all ideologies.

Controversy erupted in Egypt last week over alleged links between the Brotherhood and armed groups in the Sinai.

Television stations broadcast verified footage of one of the Islamist group's senior leaders Mohammed al-Beltagui saying "what is happening in the Sinai will stop the second president Morsi returns" to office.

Beltagui qualified his statement by saying the Brotherhood did not call the shots in the Sinai.

Opponents of the Brotherhood said the video was evidence of the strong links between the Islamist group and militants in the restive peninsula.

Beltagui categorically denied ties between his organisation and the Sinai violence. In comments to Al-Jazeera, he said the Brotherhood has "no relation with what is happening in the Sinai".