At the beginning of the First World War the Egyptian police controlling the Sinai Peninsula had withdrawn, leaving the area largely unprotected. In February 1915 a German and Ottoman force unsuccessfully attacked the Suez Canal. Minor Ottoman and Bedouin forces operating across the Sinai continued to threaten the canal from March through the Gallipoli Campaign until June, when they practically ceased until the autumn. Meanwhile, the German and Ottoman Empires supported an uprising by the Senussi (a political-religious group) on the western frontier of Egypt which began in November 1915.