CHRISTIANS STILL IN THE CROSS HAIRS DESPITE SINAI PUSH
▶ Latest killings of pilgrims show the difficulty in ensuring security on desert tracks to monastery
The latest attack on Egyptian Christians – a deadly ambush of three buses carrying pilgrims to a remote desert monastery south of Cairo – emphasised the ruthlessness of ISIS and the arrogance they have shown by attacking the same spot for the second time in as many years.
The latest assault killed seven people, including six members of one family, and wounded 19.
The ambush, claimed by ISIS, was the latest in a series of assaults against Christians going back to December 2016. Those attacks, which targeted churches packed with worshippers in Cairo and two other cities north of the capital, killed more than 100 people.
But experts said that there were signs that battlefield successes by security forces since the start of an offensive this year against militants in the Sinai Peninsula, the epicentre of a long-simmering insurgency, had helped to reduce the frequency and severity of attacks.
The death toll from Friday’s ambush was considerably smaller than the last time the same stretch of road was hit, in May last year when 29 people were killed.
But the attack took on added significance because it laid bare a level of negligence by the police in allowing militants to strike the same target – pilgrims on their way to St Samuel the Confessor Monastery for a second time.
That was widely interpreted to mean that security measures introduced after last year’s attack on the road leading to the monastery may have been insufficient, or measures were relaxed as time went by.
Some Christians complained that police stopped providing armed escorts for pilgrims’ buses as they did immediately after last year’s shootings.
There has been no official reaction to such criticism, but security officials said an investigation was under way to identify and discipline those responsible for security in Minya.
“There are difficulties involved in securing monasteries in the desert,” said Maher Farghaly, an expert on militant groups.
“The landscape of Minya and other regions south of Cairo pose a particular challenge because they are linked to Libya through several dirt roads that are impossible to fully secure.”
Mr Farghaly was alluding to claims by authorities that militant groups in Libya plot attacks and send militants and weapons across the porous desert border into Egypt to carry them out.
ISIS has pledged to go after Egypt’s Christians, in part as punishment for the Church’s support of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi who, as defence minister, led the military’s 2013 intervention to remove president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood amid mass protests against his rule.
The attacks against Christians have led to tighter security at churches religious centres, including metal detectors at their street gates and armed guards.
But providing air-tight security for a community that numbers about 10 million and is spread across the entire country is virtually impossible, so striking the militants at their strongholds in northern Sinai remains the most effective way to reduce their capability to strike back.
Since the emergence of militant groups in Sinai, the security forces have succeeded in denying them control over any significant territory they once commanded across Syria and Iraq.
More recently, they have had the militants on the run in northern Sinai after an offensive that began shortly after extremists killed 305 worshippers in a northern Sinai mosque a year ago, in what became Egypt’s worst terrorist attack in modern history.
“It is my belief that the fullout offensive has achieved many successes and broke the back of ISIS [in Egypt],” said Ahmed Ban, an expert on militant groups.
“It is no longer capable of staging high-profile attacks against police and army bases as it used to.”
To achieve that success, the military has sent tanks, armoured vehicles, fighter jets, warships and helicopter gunships along with tens of thousands of soldiers and police against the extremists in northern Sinai, which has been under a state of emergency for several years.
Security forces have also evacuated areas adjacent to the border with Gaza, razing houses and farmland to deny the militants a place to hide.
They have also blown up underground tunnels that authorities believe the extremists used to smuggle weapons and fighters in from neighbouring Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas.
But the fight is far from over, Mr Farghaly said.
“This will be with us for a little longer,” he said. “It is about what we do in Egypt as much as other countries do, like offering extremists safe havens and funds.”
Minya poses a particular challenge because it is linked to Libya through dirt roads that are impossible to secure MAHER FARGHALY Expert on militant groups