Violence on rise in Egypt as vote nears
Election will seek to replace ousted president Morsi
Egyptian militants have intensified violence ahead of a presidential election to pick a replacement for jailed president Mohammed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood party has called the ouster “a murderous military coup d’etat.”
Militants who seek an Egypt under strict Islamic law are saying the ouster of Morsi and arrests of his leading party members prove that only violence will achieve their aim, analysts said.
“The attacks are increasing in frequency, in intensity and in geographic spread,” said Issandr El Amrani, North Africa director for the International Crisis Group, in Cairo.
“We are looking at a spreading armed campaign against the government.”
In January, a truck full of explosives was driven to the gate of the police headquarters in Cairo, killing four people and wounding dozens more. Three other bomb attacks at police stations and a movie theater left two more dead.
In February, four people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a tourist bus near Egypt’s border with Israel in the Sinai peninsula. Gunmen also killed a police officer who had been a guard for a judge presiding over a case against Morsi. A bomb exploded on a bridge in Giza, apparently targeting security forces guarding the Israeli embassy.
On Saturday, gunmen shot and killed six Egyptian soldiers at an army checkpoint north of Cairo two days after gunmen fired on an army bus in Cairo.
Outside the capital, terrorists have been concentrating most major attacks in the northern Sinai, an arid and mountainous land in eastern Egypt on the border with Israel and the Hamasruled Gaza Strip.
“You might be able to call it an insurgency in parts of Sinai,” El Amrani said. “In the rest of the country, it’s not an insurgency as much as terrorist activity or activity by armed groups.”
“But the pattern is that it is growing,” he said.
Violence has spread since Egyptian authorities crushed sitins organized by backers of Morsi, who was ousted in July by the Egyptian army one year after his election. The army arrested Morsi following days of massive protests against his rule, which his detractors said was veering into dictatorship and religious law.
The public will vote on a replacement as early as April, but candidates deemed too radical or tied too closely to Morsi are barred. Meanwhile, shootings and assaults against mostly military and police are happening almost daily.
The deadliest and dominant jihadist group here is Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, or Supporters of Jerusalem — an al- Qaeda-inspired group that is comprised predominantly of Egyptians, analysts said.
The Sinai-based group has claimed responsibility for most major attacks against Egypt and Israel since its formation three years ago, including the January bomb blasts, and a recent attack that brought down an Egyptian military helicopter as well as an attempt to assassinate the Interior minister.
It also took credit for the bomb that blew up a tourist bus in which 32 South Korean tourists were riding after visiting the ancient Greek Orthodox St. Catherine’s monastery in Sinai. The attack was seen as an attempt to frighten away tourists, an important source of revenue for the Egypt government.
David Barnett, a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., described the violence as an insurgency in its infancy: “The jihadist groups weren’t necessarily ready to pounce as soon as Morsi was overthrown. No one foresaw that. So they are, to a certain extent, still playing catch-up.”