debkafile Exclusive: Al Qaeda used Israeli mobile phones for its triple suicide strike at Dahab, Sinai, on April 24

The Egyptian interior ministry disclosed this week that the al Qaeda bombers who killed 120 people in Sinai in two years were trained by an unnamed Palestinian “extremist religious” group in the Gaza Strip. It was the first time Cairo had linked al Qaeda with Palestinian terrorists. debkafile‘s counter-terror sources report from the investigation of the Dahab attack last month which left 24 dead that the Gaza-based facilitators, the suiciders and al Qaeda’s Sinai network used Israeli Pelaphone mobile phones as their primary means of intercommunication.
An instrument was found in the debris of the Dahab attack. It was believed at first to belong to one of the Israeli holidaymakers at Dahab. But when Israeli security examined the recorded calls at the phone company, they found the three suicide bombers led by Youseff Mohrab had used it for conversations from Gaza.
The Egyptians named two Gazan Palestinians as the al Qaeda team’s collaborators: Abu Suleiman, who provided money and mobile phones, and Maged al-Deri, who trained them in the use of bomb-making and firearms. The phones turned out to have belonged to the Pelaphone company, Tel Aviv. debkafile‘s sources reveal that Gaza was also the source of the bombers’ pay – $1,500 plus ten thousand Egyptian pounds apiece for blowing themselves up at target. With their pay and explosives, they set out from Gaza to spend several days before the attack in El Arish in northern Sinai, in the care of a Palestinian Bedouin called Tamer Nuseirat. Before the operation, they left the money with their families.