Egypt’s deadliest mosque attack kills 235
◆ ASSAILANTS DETONATE BOMB, THEN SPRAY FLEEING WORSHIPPERS WITH GUNFIRE ◆ 3-DAY NATIONWIDE MOURNING DECLARED; AL SISSI VOWS DETERRENT, FIRM RESPONSE ◆ UAE CONDEMNS HORRIBLE CRIME; LEADERS SEND CONDOLENCES TO EGYPT PRESIDENT
Armed attackers yesterday killed at least 235 worshippers in a bomb and gun assault on a mosque in Egypt’s restive North Sinai province, the country’s deadliest attack in recent memory.
A bomb explosion ripped through the Al Rawdah mosque west of the North Sinai capital of Al Arish before gunmen opened fire on those gathered for Friday prayers. Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then detonated a bomb outside.
The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the parked vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque. The attack in which 109 were wounded is seen as a turning point in assaults by militants whose previous attacks mainly targeted security forces and Egypt’s Christian minority.
“This is a shift in the tactics of the terrorists,” said Hossam Al Rifai, a member of parliament for northern Sinai. “An attack on civilians at Friday prayers is not something we have been used to seeing.”
The Presidency declared nationwide mourning for three days. President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi held a crisis meeting with a security committee and vowed “deterrent and firm” punishment against perpetrators and financiers of the attack.
“This dastardly act, which reflects the inhumanity of its perpetrators, will not go without a deterrent and firm punishment,” a presidential statement said. “We will respond to the terrorist attack in Al Rawda,” Al Sissi later vowed in a televised speech.
“The military and the police will take revenge.” No group has claimed responsibility for the attack on the mosque that belongs to Sufis.
Egypt’s military yesterday began conducting air strikes around the area of North Sinai.
The UN Security Council and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the deadly attack in “the strongest terms” and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
The council statement called it a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack” and reiterated that all acts of terrorism “are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation.” The UAE and Saudi Arabia condemned the horrible crime. The leaders of both countries sent condolence cables to Al Sissi and expressed their solidarity with the country.
President Donald Trump denounced what he’s calling the “horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers [sic] in Egypt.”
The hand of justice will reach everyone who participated, supported, financed or incited this cowardly attack on innocent worshippers.” Abdul Fattah Al Sissi | Egypt’s President
Al Azhar, Islam’s leading centre of learning, yesterday condemned the attack on a mosque in North Sinai that left at least 235 dead.
“Shedding blood, desecrating houses of God and terrorising worshippers are corrupt deeds, which must be struck hard and firmly,” Shaikh Ahmad Al Tayyeb, head of Al Azhar, said in a statement.
“After targeting churches [by militants], the turn has come for mosques as though terrorism wants to unify Egyptians in death and devastation. But terrorism will be routed,” he added.
In recent months, Daesh terrorists have claimed a series of deadly attacks on churches of Egypt’s Christian minority.
But yesterday, gunmen set off a bomb in a packed mosque in Egypt’s restive North Sinai province in one of the country’s deadliest attacks in recent memory, state media reported.
The explosion ripped through Al Rawdah mosque roughly 40km west of the North Sinai capital of Al Arish as gunmen opened fire on the worshippers gathered for Friday prayers.
The high death toll is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by extremist groups. The victims included civilians and conscripts.
Daesh’s Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai Peninsula.
They have also targeted followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Islam as well as Christians. A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights Daesh told AFP that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis.
In Daesh’s hardline view Sufis are considered heretics.
The militants had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader. They also abducted Sufi practitioners, but released them for “repenting”.
The group has killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula. The military has struggled to quell the militants who pledged allegiance to Daesh in November 2014.
Daesh regularly attacks soldiers and policemen in the peninsula bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip although the frequency and scale has diminished over the past year. The militants have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army.
Aside from Daesh, Egypt also faces a threat from Al Qaida aligned militants in Libya.
A group calling itself Ansar Al Islam — Supporters of Islam in Arabic — claimed an October ambush in Egypt’s Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen. Many of those killed belonged to the interior ministry’s National Security Service.