ISISNorth African Islamist terrorists dig up Nazi mines for use in IEDs

Published 15 August 2016

ISIS and its affiliate organization in North Africa have found a new source for munition materials: Digging up old landmines from the Second World War and using them to fashion IEDs for terrorist attacks. The retreating German forces under the command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel buried about seventeen million landmines under the surface in western Egypt and north-east Libya.

ISIS and its affiliate organization in North Africa have found a new source for munition materials: Digging up old landmines from the Second World War and using them to fashion IEDs for terrorist attacks.

Newsweek reports that there are about seventeen million landmines buried in western Egypt and north-east Libya.

Between 1940 and 1943 British and Commonwealth troops, under the command of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, fought pitched battles with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s German army and his Italian allies for control of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.

The allied forces won a major victory in the second Battle of El Aalamein (23 October-4 November 1942), leading Winston Churchill famously to declare: “Now this is not the end [of the war]. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

The Germans and Italians withdrew from North Africa, but they left behind tons of munitions, which they buried beneath the Sahara Desert.

Egypt’s landmine clearance chief, Fathy el-Shazly, told Newsweek: “We’ve had at least ten reports from the military of terrorists using old mines. Even now, these things trouble us in different ways.”

El-Shazly said the Egyptian authorities first noticed the danger in 2004, when thirty-four people were killed in the resort of Taba, close to the border with Israel.

Forensic investigation confirmed that the seven bombs used in the Taba attack by an ISIS-affiliated, Sinai-based Islamist terror group had been fashioned from wartime munitions.

One group recycling and using the Nazi munitions is Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which is based in Egypt’s Sinai Desert and declared allegiance to ISIS in 2014.

The buried landmines continue to extract a toll even without the intervention of Islamist groups. Since 1945, about 7,000 Egyptians have been killed by mines in north-west Egypt. Since 2006, local Bedouin tribesmen have suffered 150 casualties.

It appears that ISIS and Ansar Beit al-Maqdis have found ways to retrieve and extricate the mines without setting them off, and then remove the explosives for use in making IEDs.

To address the growing terrorist threat, the Egyptian military has purchased 700 armored vehicles from the United States.

Military experts notes that Second World War-era weapons are used by different factions in the Middle East, not only by Islamist terrorists. Thus, one Syrian rebel group was found to be using 70-year-old howitzers. 

N. R. Jenzen-Jones, an arms consultant, told Newsweek: “We’ve seen several dozen British Webley revolvers previously or presently for sale, and then some Italian cavalry carbines, some Mausers, Bren guns.’