Egyptian village where mosque was attacked had been warned

CAIRO — Elders of a village in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where militants killed 305 people in a mosque had been warned by Islamic State operatives to stop collaborating with security forces and to suspend rituals associated with Islam’s mystical Sufi movement, security officials and residents said Sunday.

The latest warning came as recently as a week ago, telling villagers in Al-Rawdah not to hold Sufi rituals on Nov. 2930 to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, according to residents and the officials who work for security and military intelligence agencies operating in Sinai.

Local operatives of the Islamic State affiliate in Sinai consider Sufis to be heretics who should be killed. Ahmed Saqr, an expert on the Sinai insurgency, said militants had publicly identified the mosque, which also serves as a Sufi centre, as a target months ago.

He wrote Saturday in a Facebook post that the selection of the Al-Rawdah mosque as a target “raises questions about those who read, analyze and prepare in our security agencies,” and whether anything could have been done to prevent the “untold horrors.”

Mohammed Ibrahim, a university student from the village, said militants had warned residents a few days before Friday’s attack not to collaborate with security forces. The warning, he told The Associated Press by telephone Sunday from the nearby town of Bir al-Abd, followed the detention three weeks ago by villagers of three suspected militants who were handed over to security forces.