 "Egypt mosque attack: Death toll soars to 235 in bomb and gun assault in North Sinai")
Cairo: Gunmen attacked a packed mosque in Egypt’s restive North Sinai province on Friday and set off a bomb, killing at least 235 people in one of the country’s deadliest attacks in recent memory, state media reported. A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish before gunmen opened fire on the worshippers gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said. Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then planted a bomb outside. The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants’ vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque. [caption id=“attachment_4226549” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Egypt’s president Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi emergency meeting with officials after militants attacked crowded mosquein Sinai Peninsula. AP[/caption] An angry Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also pledged to respond with “brutal force” against militants who massacred at least 235 people at a mosque during weekly prayers on Friday. “The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period,” he also said in a televised speech. Egypt’s presidency declared three days of mourning, state television reported, as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met his security ministers to follow developments. Ahmed Abul Gheit, head of the Arab League which is based in Cairo, condemned the “terrifying crime which again shows that Islam is innocent of those who follow an extremist terrorist ideology,” his spokesman said in a statement. US President Donald Trump dubbed the attack as “horrible and cowardly”.“The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!” he said on Twitter.
Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt. The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017
Islamic State views Sufis as heretics The Islamic State group’s Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula. They have also targeted followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam as well as Christians. The victims included civilians and conscripts praying at the mosque. A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights Islamic State told AFP that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis. The Islamic State group shares the puritan Salafi view of Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints. The jihadists had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising magic which Islam forbids, and abducted Sufi practitioners later released after “repenting.” The group has killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to flee the peninsula. The military has struggled to quell the jihadists who pledged allegiance to Islamic State in November 2014. Islamic State regularly conducts attacks against soldiers and policemen in the peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, although the frequency and scale of such attacks has diminished over the past year. The jihadists have since increasingly turned to civilian targets, attacking not only Christians and Sufis but also Bedouin Sinai inhabitants accused of working with the army. Aside from Islamic State, Egypt also faces a threat from Al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists who operate out of neighbouring Libya. A group calling itself Ansar al-Islam, Supporters of Islam in Arabic claimed an October ambush in Egypt’s the Western Desert that killed at least 16 policemen. Many of those killed belonged to the interior ministry’s secretive National Security Service. The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader Emad al-Din Abdel Hamid, a most wanted jihadist who was a military officer before joining an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Libya’s militant stronghold of Derna.
