WORLD_ EGYPT_ Sinai attack kills 30 troops

The Gulf Today

Sinai attack kills 30 troops

January 31, 2015


CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi cut short a visit to Ethiopia for an African Union summit on Friday after Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) Egyptian wing claimed the killing of at least 30 soldiers and police officers in the Sinai Peninsula.

The four separate attacks on security forces in North Sinai on Thursday night were among the bloodiest in years and the first significant assault in the region since the most active Sinai militant group swore allegiance to IS in November.

Sisi left Addis Ababa after meeting the Ethiopian premier following the AU summit’s opening session, an Egyptian official there said.

Most of Thursday’s casualties occurred in the bombing of a military hotel and base in El Arish, the heavily guarded Sinai provincial capital. Security sources in Sinai said three military planes left El Arish for Cairo on Friday morning carrying 30 body bags, some of them containing corpses left in pieces by the bomb blasts.

They said at least five men were in critical condition and the death toll was likely to rise.

Two children, one of them 6 months old, died on Friday from wounds suffered on Thursday night as soldiers fought militants in a village near Sheikh Zuweid, close to the Gaza Strip and Israel’s border, local medical sources said.

An army statement on Friday did not give a final death toll.

It said the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had met and was determined to continuing supporting the state’s efforts to complete a “roadmap for achieving security and stability.”

“All of us are in sorrow over what happened yesterday in Sinai but Egypt is paying the price of confronting terrorism and extremism,” Sisi said in a statement carried by the state news agency Mena.

The most active group, Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis, changed its name to Sinai Province last year when it swore allegiance to ISIS, the militant group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, drawing US-led air strikes.

A daily news broadcast released via ISIS Twitter feeds said Thursday’s attacks had been led by “men of the ISIS.”

Egyptian soldiers and police are often targeted at outposts outside the widely desolate, rugged Sinai’s main towns.

But the assault on military facilities in El Arish could signal an escalation in their capabilities, according to Zack Gold of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

This week had already been a bloody one in Egypt.

After two attacks in October in which 33 security personnel were killed, Egypt declared a state of emergency in the area where Sinai borders Gaza and accelerated plans to create a buffer strip.

A major investment conference is set for March, where the government hopes to attract billions for huge infrastructure projects, and Egypt will also launch long-awaited parliamentary elections the same month.

But attempts to reinstate stability in the Arab world’s largest country have been impeded in part by the Sinai-based insurgency that has intensified since the exit of president Mohammed Mursi.

Reuters

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