September 2012 southern Israel cross-border attack refers to an incident on 21 September 2012, when three Egyptian militants, wearing civilian clothes and armed with explosive belts, AK-47 rifles and RPG launchers, approached the Egypt-Israel border in an area where the Egypt–Israel barrier was incomplete, and opened fire on a group of IDF soldiers supervising the civilian workers who were constructing the border fence. The jihadist militant group Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, an al-Qaeda-inspired militant organization based in the Sinai Peninsula, claimed responsibility for the attack.