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Militants Affiliated With ISIS Attack Security Sites in Sinai Egyptian Militants Linked to ISIS Launch Attack in Northern Sinai
(about 1 hour later)
CAIRO — Militants carried out a broad attack on Egyptian Army checkpoints and other security installations in the northern Sinai Peninsula early Wednesday, killing at least 18 soldiers and police officers, according to state news media. CAIRO — Militants affiliated with the Islamic State besieged a town in Egypt’s northern Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday in a coordinated assault that turned the area into war zone, caught the Egyptian authorities by surprise and underscored their inability to contain a growing insurgency.
A militant group affiliated with the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the offensive. In a statement circulated on social media, the group said it had attacked more than 15 checkpoints and police installations, using heavy weapons including mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Dozens of Egyptian soldiers were killed, police officers were trapped in their posts and residents were warned to stay indoors by jihadists roaming on motorcycles as the Egyptian Army responded with warplanes in the area around the town, Sheikh Zuwaid, 200 miles northeast of Cairo, near the Gaza Strip.
The army said the checkpoints had come under attack by militants driving pickup trucks equipped with antiaircraft guns. The attack was the most audacious and deadliest yet for the Egyptian militants who have affiliated with the Islamic State, the extremist group that has emerged as the most potent jihadist militant force convulsing the Arab world. The group has solidly established itself in Syria, expanded into Iraq and has strong footholds in Libya.
Witnesses and security officials speaking to state news media described gunmen firing from rooftops and deploying car bombs in the town of Sheikh Zuwaid, near the checkpoints, where civilians were wounded in the fighting. The death toll in the attacks was expected to rise. Six hours after the assault began with simultaneous attacks on more than a dozen military checkpoints, the militants still were battling for control of Sheikh Zuwaid. Warplanes roared overhead.
Ambulance workers said roads leading to the town had been booby-trapped with explosive devices. “No one is safe here,” Mostafa Singer, a journalist in the city, said by telephone with the sounds of the fighting in the background. “The explosions are everywhere.”
Unnamed security officials told The Associated Press that at least 30 soldiers had been killed, and that others had been taken captive by militants who also seized armored vehicles and weapons. The assault came 48 hours after militants assassinated Egypt’s top prosecutor, bombing his convoy on a residential street in Cairo. That attack, along with the Sinai assault, left the government of President Abdel-Fattah el Sisi suddenly struggling to battle an expanding insurgency, fought by multiple groups, on several fronts.
The militant group, which calls itself the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, has carried out similar attacks at regular intervals. The scope and the duration of the assault on Wednesday, however, which was continuing after more than five hours of fighting, made it the largest such attack in months. The prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was the most senior official killed since the insurgency erupted nearly two years ago, in the aftermath of the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing on Monday, but analysts said it was possible that the attack was the work of one of a proliferation of new Islamist militant groups that have vowed to retaliate for the government’s crackdown on its opponents.
The assault was another blow to the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, which has struggled to put down an insurgency that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of soldiers and police officers over the last two years. Most worrying to Mr. Sisi, the violence this week appeared to signal the convergence of the two streams of violent resistance to his government: from the more recently formed militant groups, operating in the Nile Valley, as well as the jihadists with transnational ties to the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, intent on wresting control of territory from the Egyptian government.
On Monday, in a significant escalation, unknown militants assassinated Egypt’s top prosecutor by bombing his convoy in a street of the capital. In the last few weeks, militants have also attacked Egypt’s most popular tourist destinations, threatening a pillar of the country’s economy.
The prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, is the most senior official to have been killed since the insurgency grew after the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first fairly elected president and a Muslim Brotherhood leader, in 2013. But the sharpest challenge to the government’s authority has come from the militants based in northern Sinai, who even before Wednesday’s attack, had essentially gained control of several areas, setting up their own checkpoints and carrying out attacks on soldiers, seemingly at will.
Officials have blamed the Brotherhood for the killing of Mr. Barakat and other violence, though the group has denied responsibility. The threat has persisted even as Mr. Sisi has sent his military in force to counter the threat in the Sinai — going as far as razing the town of Rafah, on the border with the Gaza Strip, to prevent the smuggling of militants and arms.
The sharpest challenge to the government’s authority has come from the militants based in northern Sinai, who have essentially wrested control of several areas from the state. They have set up their own checkpoints and carried out attacks on soldiers seemingly at will, despite a large-scale military operation to regain control of the area. Even with those measures, though, Wednesday’s assault appeared to go much further than previous attacks. Mr. Singer and other witnesses speaking to local media said the militants were fighting from rooftops in Sheikh Zuwaid, laying explosives in the roads and besieging the local police station. Ambulances were stuck on the outskirts of town, unable to pick up the dead and wounded.
“We do not know if the army will be able to solve this crisis,” Mr. Singer said. “Until now, it is on the side of the militants.”