Egypt hits Libyan city with more air strikes

Cairo launches third day of bombing raids against militant camps where murderers of 30 Christians were trained

CAIRO // Egypt launched another round of air strikes at the eastern Libyan city of Derna yesterday, in retaliation for the murder of 30 Coptic Christians last week.

One of the strikes hit the western entrance of Derna while two more pounded the south of the town. While Cairo would not comment on yesterday’s attacks, it said raids carried out over the weekend were aimed at militant camps where those responsible for attacking the convoy of Christians had been trained.

Egypt said it had hit militant camps in Derna on Friday and the central desert town of Waddan on Saturday.

The air strikes came after masked militants boarded the vehicles on their way to a monastery in the southern Egyptian province of Minya on Friday, shooting dead 30 people.

ISIL said it had carried out the attack.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El Sisi said on Friday that his planes had bombed a militant training camp in Derna and would carry out more strikes on training camps.

The raids yesterday and Friday on Derna appeared to hit camps belonging to the Shura Council of the Mujahideen, a pro-Al Qaeda group opposed to ISIL.

The group has denied involvement in the Minya attack. But loyalties among Libya’s militant groups are ever-shifting so the council may now have some connection to those behind the Christians’ deaths.

Egyptian foreign affairs minister Sameh Shoukry briefed US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on the bombing on Saturday.

Mr Tillerson offered condolences for the murdered Copts and said Washington backed Egypt’s efforts to combat terrorism. The strikes came amid increasing international concern over the success of militants in setting up bases in Libya, after a suicide bombing in the British city of Manchester last week that killed 22 people.

The bomber was of Libyan origin and had returned to Britain from a trip to Libya just four days before the attack.

His father and brother, who live in the Libyan capital, have been arrested in Tripoli in connection with the bombing.

“The terrorist attack in Egypt, and a few days ago in Manchester, are stark reminders that the ugly face of terrorism knows no borders,” Nassir Al Nasser, High Representative for the UN Alliance of Civilisations, said on Saturday.

“It is also a reminder that we should all stand up together in our fight against terrorism.”

The reaction of Libya’s two rival governments to the air raids has been very different.

In the eastern city of Tobruk, Libya’s elected parliament, the Cairo-allied House of Representatives, welcomed the strikes.

The spokesman for its eastern Libyan National Army (LNA), Col Ahmad Messmari, said on Sunday it was supporting the Egyptian strikes with bombing raids of its own on militant ammunition stores and training camps. But the UN- backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli, whose forces oppose the LNA, condemned Egyptian strikes as a breach of sovereignty.

Egypt’s choice of targets are significant.

Derna, on Libya’s north-east coast, has long been a centre of Libyan militant activity. ISIL established its first Libyan base there in 2014, but a year later local militias allied to Al Qaeda forced the group out of the town. Commentators have pointed out that ISIL is no longer in Derna. But Egyptian officials insist the militants responsible for Friday’s attack in Minya are based there, although Cairo is yet to name the group to which these militants belong.

Egypt’s claim is bolstered by evidence that militant organisations based in Libya have an interchangeable membership.

Waddan, in the southern Sahara desert, is the base for several militant groups including the Benghazi Defence Brigades, made up of militants ejected from the city of the same name by the LNA, which is led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

Egyptian strikes, carried out by US-made F16 aircraft, are likely to be more precise than those carried out by the older LNA planes.

They will probably swing the pendulum of Libya’s civil war further towards Field Marshal Haftar’s forces, which have already gained ascendancy over militias aligned with the Government of National Accord.

Survivors and religious leaders have said the Minya attack was a well-planned, brutal and sectarian massacre, in which men on the vehicles stopped were killed and the women wounded – some to ensure they could not have children if they survived.

Marco, a 14-year-old survivor, said masked gunmen dressed in military attire asked the victims to recite the shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.

When they refused, they were executed. Marco’s father was among the victims.

The head of the Coptic church in the city of Maghagha, Bishop Agathon, said that the militants distributed a small pamphlet on fasting and Ramadan before executing the men and looting the women’s valuables. At least nine of the victims were from Maghagha.

A volunteer medical student, who did not give his name for his family’s safety, said the hospital in Minya was too poorly equipped to deal with so many injuries. “We thank God that they’re now martyrs in heaven now,” said Hana Somayel, 53, whose brother, niece, and father were killed in the Minya attack. “Now they are in a better place.”