CAIRO—Terrorists who killed more than 300 people in an attack on a mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai on Friday were carrying an ISIS flag and were between 25 to 30 in number, the public prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Saturday.
The gunmen, some wearing masks and military-style uniforms, surrounded the mosque blocking windows and a doorway and opened fire inside with automatic rifles, the statement citing their investigation and interviews with wounded survivors.
“They numbered between 25 and 30, carrying the Daesh flag and took up positions in front of the mosque door and its 12 windows with automatic rifles,” the statement said using an Arabic term for ISIS.
Egypt‘s military said on Saturday it had carried out air strikes and raids overnight against those it held responsible for killing more than 230 worshippers at a mosque in North Sinai.
The bloodiest attack in Egypt‘s modern history, in which militants gunned down worshippers, brought condemnation from leaders from Washington to Moscow, while President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning in the shocked nation.
Relatives of the victims of the bomb and gun assault on the North Sinai Rawda mosque sit outside the Suez Canal University hospital in the eastern port city of Ismailia on November 25, 2017, where they were taken to receive treatment following the deadly attack the day before. (Mohamed El-Shahed /AFP/Getty Images)No group has claimed responsibility, but Egyptian forces are battling a stubborn ISIS affiliate in the region, one of the surviving branches of the militant group after it suffered defeats by U.S.-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.
“The air force has over the past few hours eliminated a number of outposts used by terrorist elements,” the army said.
Witnesses say gunmen set off a bomb at the end of Friday prayers at the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El-Arish city, and then opened fire as worshippers tried to flee, shooting at ambulances and setting fire to cars to block roads.
Images on state media showed bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the mosque.
Striking a mosque would be a shift in tactics for the Sinai militants, who have previously attacked troops and police and more recently tried to spread their insurgency to the mainland by hitting Christian churches and pilgrims.
The massive casualties in the Sinai attack and the targeting of a mosque stunned Egyptians who have struggled through instability after the 2011 uprising ousted long-standing leader Hosni Mubarak, and the years of protests that followed.
Egyptian army conscripts stand guard outside the Suez Canal University hospital in the eastern port city of Ismailia on November 25, 2017, where the victims of a bomb and gun assault on the North Sinai Rawda mosque that took place the day before are receiving treatment.(Mohamed El-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images)
“May the souls of all those who die rest in peace, Muslims and Christians alike… these people have no religion,” said Abdullah an unemployed man in downtown Cairo referring to the attackers. “Every other day someone dies, every other day a church is bombed … where is the security?”
Utmost Force
Local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as ISIS consider targets because they revere saints and shrines. ISIS has targeted Sufi Muslims and Shi’ite in other countries like Iraq.
The jihadists in Egypt‘s Sinai have also attacked local tribes and their militias for working with the army and police.
Iraqi Shiite fighters from the Popular Mobilization units take off an Islamic State flag from an electricity pole on March 3, 2016, during an operation in the desert of Samarra aimed at retaking areas from ISIS jihadists. (Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)Sisi, a former armed forces commander who supporters see as a bulwark against Islamist terrorists, promised the “utmost force” against those responsible for Friday’s attack. Security has been a key reason for his supporters to back him, and he is expected to run for re-election next year.
“What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism,” he said on Friday.
North Sinai, a mostly desert area which stretches from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, has long been a security headache for Egypt and is a strategic region for Cairo because of its sensitive borders.
Local group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, once allied to al Qaeda, split from it and declared allegiance to ISIS in 2014. But attacks in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood after mass protests against his rule.
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