23 soldiers killed, dozens wounded in Sinai attacks
Egypt military kills ‘40 Daesh assailants’ Militants sustain a steady war of attrition
CAIRO: At least 23 Egyptian soldiers were killed and 26 more injured by two deadly car bombs that ripped through army checkpoints in northern Sinai on Friday, security sources said.
The attacks took place in the Sinai Peninsula where Daesh is conducting an insurgency, the military said.
Militants unleashed a suicide car bomb and heavy gunfire on a military checkpoint in the northeastern peninsula, the authorities said. However, it was not immediately possible to obtain an official death toll.
The military said it killed 40 assailants as it clashed with extremists in northern Sinai, the main focus of the deadly Daesh insurgency.
The blitz attack began when a suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint at a military compound in the southern Rafah village of El-Barth, followed by heavy gunfire from dozens of masked militants on foot. The dead included a high-ranking special forces officer, Col. Ahmed El-Mansi.
Security officials said ambulances raced to the sites of the attacks south of the town of Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip.
Militants have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers in attacks in northern Sinai in the past.
Daesh has also attacked tourists, killing all 224 on board a Russian plane carrying holidaymakers in 2015, as well as Christian churches elsewhere in Egypt.
The militants in the Sinai pledged allegiance to Daesh in late 2014, establishing the self-styled “Sinai Province” in the peninsula, which borders Israel as well as Gaza.
Unlike the main organization in Syria and Iraq, they have been unable to seize population centers, with one attempt to occupy a town in 2015 ending with the military unleashing F-16 jets against the militants.
Instead the group has tried to keep up a steady war of attrition involving roadside bombings, sniper fire and checkpoint attacks such as the ones on Friday.
The militants are increasingly encircled in the peninsula, with the military razing sections of Rafah to create a buffer zone with the Gaza Strip and destroying tunnels connecting with Palestine.
But that has not prevented them from establishing cells elsewhere in Egypt that launched a series of attacks on Christians that have killed dozens since December, when a suicide bomber targeted a Cairo church.
That attack was followed by two church bombings in April that killed at least 45 people and a massacre of Christians heading on a bus to a monastery in May.
The April attacks prompted President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to declare a nationwide state of emergency like that already in force in northern Sinai. He has pledged to defeat the militants.