Islamic State claims responsibility for blowing up Israel-Egypt gas pipeline

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for blowing up a natural gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula that brings gas from Israel to Egypt.

At least six masked terrorists planted explosives under the pipeline on Sunday night, The Associated Press reported, citing security officials in Egypt. Gas flow between Egypt and Israel continued uninterrupted, according to reports, because the blast damaged a local gas line.

In 2018, Israel signed a $15 billion deal to provide Egypt with 64 billion cubic meters of gas over a 10-year period after Israeli gas discoveries off its coast in the Mediterranean.

The Islamic State on Monday afternoon said it detonated the explosives next to a pipeline linking “the Jews” and “the apostate Egyptian government,” The Jerusalem Post reported.

Gas pipelines between the two countries were routinely sabotaged in 2011 and 2012 by the Islamic State, or ISIS, which objected to Egyptian sales of natural gas to Israel at the time amounting to more than 40 percent of Israel’s natural gas needs to produce electricity. Critics in part objected that Israel was not paying enough. Egypt cancelled its gas exports to Israel in 2012.