Coordinated attacks kill dozens in restive Sinai region
Video by Yuka Royer
Text by FRANCE 24
Latest update : 2015-01-30
Militants struck more than a dozen army and police targets in the restive Sinai Peninsula with simultaneous attacks involving a car bomb and mortar rounds on Thursday, killing at least 26 security officers, officials said.
The attacks were swiftly claimed by a militant outfit affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.
The group, which now calls itself the “Sinai Province”, has launched several attacks against police and the army in Sinai in recent years, stepping up its insurgency following the military overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
“This is one of the biggest and perhaps most dangerous groups to have ditched its alliance with al Qaeda in favour of allegiance to IS,” said FRANCE 24’s international affairs editor, Douglas Herbert.
Thursday’s wide-ranging attacks, which struck the Northern Sinai provincial capital el-Arish, the nearby town of Sheik Zuwayid and the town of Rafah bordering Gaza, indicate a previously unseen level of coordination.
Officials said the strikes included at least one car bomb set off outside a military base and mortar rounds fired at a hotel, a police club and more than a dozen checkpoints.
At least 60 people were wounded in the attack, according to medical officials, who also confirmed the death toll. Twenty-five army soldiers and a policeman were among those killed.
Officials said the death toll is expected to rise after the military base hit by the car bomb was also struck by mortars that destroyed buildings inside the camp, burying people under the rubble.
Army spokesmen promptly blamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood for the attacks, in what has become a familiar pattern since the Brotherhood was banned amid a crackdown following the Islamist president’s overthrow.
“Whenever we have an attack the government blames the Muslim Brotherhood, even though in this case we have a claim from another group,” said FRANCE 24’s Douglas Herbert.
Tensions have risen across Egypt in recent days with protesters marking four years since the 2011 uprising that ousted veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak from power.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Friday he was cutting short his visit to Addis Ababa, where he was due to attend an African Union summit, in order to respond to the latest attacks.
Thursday’s coordinated bombings continue a pattern of unrest in the remote but strategic Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Gaza Strip, Israel and Egypt's Suez Canal.
They threaten to hinder Egypt’s attempts to secure much-needed investment for large-scale projects in the region, including plans to build a second canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
The areas where the attacks took place have been under a state of emergency and a curfew since October, when militants killed dozens of soldiers in a deadly attack on a checkpoint in Sinai.
In an attempt to stop weapons smuggling to and from the Gaza Strip, authorities demolished houses and residential buildings located within 500 metres of the border, where a complex network of tunnels had long been used to bring consumer goods, as well as weapons and fighters, to and from the Palestinian territory.
Sinai-based militants have exploited long-held grievances in the impoverished north of the peninsula, where the mainly Bedouin population has complained of neglect by Cairo authorities and where few have benefited from the famed tourist resorts in the more peaceful southern part of Sinai.
Egypt has a long history of Islamic militancy. Former President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamic militants in 1981, and extremists carried out a wave of attacks targeting security forces, Christians and Western tourists during the 1990s.
(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)
Date created : 2015-01-29
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