Egyptian Affiliate of Islamic State Claims Attack on Checkpoints
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Version 0 of 1. CAIRO — The Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate said in a statement on a social media site that it had carried out an attack in North Sinai on military checkpoints that killed five members of the country’s security forces on Saturday. Several mortar shells hit two checkpoints, security officials said. North Sinai is the center of an insurgency waged by militants who support the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and has a presence in Libya, Egypt’s neighbor. Egypt’s state news agency, MENA, said that the attack by terrorists — the term the government uses to describe militants — involved rockets and gunfire and that clashes were continuing. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said that militants in the region are an existential threat to Egypt, other Arab states and the West. While a tough crackdown has neutralized Mr. Sisi’s enemies in the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, which calls itself Sinai Province, remains resilient despite steady pressure from military operations. On Thursday, Sinai Province said that it fired a rocket at an Egyptian naval vessel in the Mediterranean Sea near the coast of Israel and the Gaza Strip. The group has killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers since the army toppled President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. |