Imam survived by lying still under bodies

THE imam of the Sinai mosque attacked by terrorists has described how he survived the massacre by lying still beneath the bodies of murdered worshippers as the gunmen scoured the room for survivors.

Mohamed Abdel Fattah, 26, who was opening his sermon when the attack on the al-rawda mosque that left 305 people dead began last Friday told The Daily Telegraph: “People started to run. Everyone was trying to find shelter from the bullets.”

The cleric started to climb from the minbar, a small raised pulpit, but in the chaos he fell. Before he could climb to his feet, bodies began to fall on top of him. “Some people tried to get shelter by the minbar. Two or three people fell on top of me. They were bleeding and I could hear nothing but bullets,” he said. A gunman stood over him, seemingly checking if there were any survivors among the pile of bodies at the foot of the minbar but the jihadist did not see the cleric.

Egypt’s interior ministry said yesterday it had killed 11 people in anti-terror raids in the city of Ismailia, 110 miles west of the mosque.