Mosque carnage

Bomb and gunfire attack

EGYPT: At least 235 people have been killed after Islamist militants set off a bomb and opened fire on people attending prayers at a mosque in Egypt’s restive northern Sinai, state media reports.

No group claimed responsibility for the assault on Friday but it is the deadliest yet in the region where for three years Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

US President Donald Trump condemned the attack via Twitter.

“Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers in Egypt. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!”

State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir alAbed, west of the city of El Arish.

At least 235 people died and another 125 people were wounded, the state news agency MENA had earlier reported.

“They were shooting at people as they left the mosque,” a local resident whose relatives were at the scene told Reuters. “They were shooting at the ambulances too.”

Arabiya news channel and some local sources said some of the worshippers were sufis who hardliners such as Islamic State regard as apostates because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry.

President Abdel Fattah alSisi convened an emergency security meeting. Militants have mostly targeted security forces in their attacks since bloodshed in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi, then an armed forces commander, led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood.