Egyptian cabinet yesterday said that a new military base would be built on the country’s eastern border to secure the Suez Canal.
Local official sources told The New Khalij that the new base would be located in the Ismailia governorate’s Abu Sultan, adding that it would be built along an area of 160,000 acres.
The sources provided details about neither the date of the base opening date nor the construction cost.
“The new base will secure the canal’s shipment activity, tunnels, as well as its economic zone,” the sources noted.
There are other two military bases in Egypt, including Mohamed Naguib at the country’s northwestern border and Bernice in the south.
Bernice – built on the Red Sea coast and includes a naval base, airbase, and a military hospital – was inaugurated last month in a ceremony attended by the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Zayed.
In recent months, SDArabia reported that the Egyptian regime was building three new naval bases in strategic locations along the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
Egypt has been battling an entrenched Islamist insurgency for several years in North Sinai, with hundreds of security forces killed in the attacks. In February 2018, the government launched a large-scale counter-terrorism campaign involving the police and the military to crush militants in the northern and central Sinai regions, parts of the Nile Delta and the country’s Western Desert.
