TEHRAN – The death toll in a bomb and gun attack on a mosque in northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt’s state prosecutor said Saturday. Another 128 people were injured, according to a statement from the public prosecutor read out on Egyptian state-run news channel Nile TV. Between […]
TEHRAN – The death toll in a bomb and gun attack on a mosque in northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt’s state prosecutor said Saturday.
Another 128 people were injured, according to a statement from the public prosecutor read out on Egyptian state-run news channel Nile TV.
Between 25 to 30 armed men carried out the assault on the al Rawdah Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed, the statement said.
The prosecutor also gave more detail about how the brutal attack unfolded. The attackers arrived in five SUVs and were armed with automatic machine guns, the statement said. They took position in front of the mosque and its entrances, CNN reported.
Survivors of the incident now at the hospital described massive gunfire and loud explosions at the start of the attack. A number of attackers, some of them masked, then entered the mosque, the statement said.
The attackers had long beards and hair, were wearing military fatigues and were armed with heavy machine guns, according to the statement. One of those who entered the mosque was carrying an ISIS (also known as Daesh) flag, it said.
There has not yet been a claim of responsibility from ISIS or its affiliate in Egypt. However, the attack bears the hallmarks of a strike by ISIS.
Despite the efforts of Egyptian security forces, ISIS maintains a foothold in the north of the Sinai Peninsula and inspires local extremist groups.
Meantime, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has vowed to respond to the massacre — believed to be the deadliest terror attack on the country’s soil — with “brute force.”
Egyptian warplanes conducted airstrikes on “terrorist outposts” and vehicles following the attack, the military said Saturday.
“The Egyptian Air Force pursued the terrorist elements, discovered and destroyed a number of vehicles that carried out the brutal terrorist killings, and killed all terrorists inside those vehicles,” military spokesman Tamer Rifai said in a statement Saturday.
It also targeted a number of terrorist outposts containing weapons, ammunition and radical elements, Rifai said.
