US Edition 
Israel forms spy network to fight Sinai attacks
Israel has deployed hundreds of intelligence agents on its southern border with Egypt to combat the growing threat of attack from Jihadist groups in the neighbouring Sinai peninsula.
Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security agency, has formed the agents into a vast network amid mounting concern about continuing instability in Egypt, particularly in the sprawling Sinai region which forms a frontier with Israel and the Gaza Strip. The largely lawless territory is now the prime focus of Israel's counter-terrorism effort as fears grow that it could attract foreign Jihadists to fight alongside the local Bedouin recruits, sources say.
The Israeli network has been tracking the activities of at least 15 different Salafist groups through close cooperation with Egyptian security forces, Haaretz newspaper reported.
Its existence - confirmed to The Telegraph by a high-level Israeli official - partly explains Israel's worry about the prospect of President Barack Obama cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid in response to the Egyptian army's role last month in toppling Mohammed Morsi, the democratically-elected Islamist former president.
The White House has so far resisted international and domestic pressure to label Mr Morsi's removal as a military coup - a legal designation that would force it to suspend the aid package it gives to Egypt's armed forces.
While Israeli officials have publicly refused to comment, Benjamin Netanyahu's government is believed to be lobbying intensively behind the scenes to prevent a cut off of the aid, which underpins the 1979 Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt.
Israel's concern has been heightened by a series of recent events in northern Sinai, where officials believe there are four groups specifically bent on attacking the Jewish state.
One of them, the Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, claimed responsibility for a rocket attack last week on the border city of Eilat - an important tourist centre - that was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile shield system.
That attack came after at least four members of another group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, were killed in an August 10 drone strike attributed in some reports to Israel. Israeli officials refused to comment.
The day before, Israel had briefly closed Eilat airport apparently amid fears that incoming and outgoing planes could be subject to rocket attacks.
Another group, Jaish al-Islam, which was involved in kidnapping the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit - later freed in a prisoner exchange deal - is believed to be training fighters in Gaza before sending them back into Sinai. The group is led by Mumtaz Dughmush, said to belong to a Gaza clan. The Gaza link explains the involvement of Shin Bet, which overseas intelligence in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.