Jihadis bombed in ‘brutal force’ reply
EGYPT grieved as the death toll from a gun and bomb assault on a mosque in the Sinai Peninsula soared above 300, including children, in the deadliest attack the country has witnessed.
The army said planes had struck militant hideouts in the insurgency-racked North Sinai in retaliation.
According to the state prosecution, up to 30 militants in camouflage flying the Islamic State group’s black banner had surrounded the mosque and massacred the worshippers in Friday prayers.
Twenty-seven children were among the dead, it said.
IS has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
As funerals for the victims were held, many were buried unwashed in their bloodied clothes, according to the Islamic burial practices for martyrs.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning and vowed to “respond with brutal force” to the attack, among the deadliest in the world since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
“The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period,” Mr Sisi said.
Hours later Egyptian air force jets pursued the “terrorists and discovered several vehicles used in the terrorist attack, killing those inside near the vicinity of the attack”, an army spokesman said.
The state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that 305 people were killed and 128 wounded in the assault on the Rawda mosque in a village about 40km west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish.
It said the attackers, with long beards and hair often seen on jihadists, arrived in five all-terrain vehicles and surrounded the mosque.
Witnesses said they heard gunshots and explosions before the assailants entered the mosque, according to the prosecution.
“Nobody in that mosque escaped unharmed,” said the brother of the mosque’s imam, Mohamed Abdel Fattah.
“He was shot in the foot,” the brother, Ahmed said, adding the religious leader was still in “too much shock” to speak.
Relatives visited victims in hospital in the city of Ismailia, near the Suez Canal, where the wounded were taken for treatment. World leaders voiced outrage. US President Donald Trump denounced the “horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers”.