Islamic State loyalists kill 30 in series of co-ordinated attacks
CAIRO — Two children were killed by crossfire Friday as the Egyptian army fought an insurgency in northern Sinai against militants loyal to Islamic State.
A six-month-old baby was hit in the head by a bullet and a six-year-old was killed in a rocket blast. Two others, including a 12-year-old, were badly wounded by gunfire.
The clashes came a day after Islamists implemented a wave of co-ordinated attacks across the Sinai peninsula that claimed at least 30 lives and injured more than 100. They were the deadliest strikes in Egypt in decades.
While the growing insurgency in Egypt is a serious challenge to President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, there was no new word Friday from Islamic State regarding its captives, a Japanese journalist and Jordanian military pilot, a day after the latest purported deadline passed for a possible prisoner swap.
Jordan has said it will release an al-Qaida prisoner, Sajida al-Rishawi, from death row if it gets proof the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, is alive.
Meanwhile, American military officials say a mid-level Islamic State militant who specialized in chemical weapons was killed in an U.S. airstrike near Mosul in Iraq last week.
U.S. Central Command says Abu Malik was killed Jan. 24. The command says Malik worked at Saddam Hussein’s Muthana chemical weapons production facility before joining al-Qaida in Iraq in 2005.
In Tokyo, officials said they had no progress to report on an effort to free kidnapped journalist Kenji Goto.
“There is nothing I can tell you,” said government spokesman Yoshihide Suga, reiterating Japan’s “strong trust” in the Jordanians to help save Goto.
In Egypt, al-Sisi claimed three weeks ago that a huge military operation, which included razing homes in the city of Rafah to establish a 12-kilometre buffer zone, was about to finish “cleansing” the Sinai peninsula of terrorism.
Instead, 10 mortars and a suicide bomber hit North Sinai Thursday, as militants fired rockets at police headquarters in El Arish, the provincial capital, and at a military base and residential complex for soldiers. There was also a suicide car bombing and a soldier died when a rocket hit a checkpoint in Rafah.
Al-Sisi cut short a visit to Ethiopia and flew back to Egypt.