In the deadliest-ever attack by Islamic extremists in Egypt, terrorists assaulted a crowded mosque Friday during prayers, blasting helpless worshippers with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades and blocking their escape routes. At least 235 people were killed before the assailants got away.
The attack in the troubled northern part of the Sinai Peninsula targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Islamic extremists, including the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, consider Sufis heretics because of their less literal interpretations of the faith.
The horrifying bloodshed in the town of Bir al-Abd also wounded at least 109, according to the state news agency. It offered the latest sign that, despite more than three years of fighting in Sinai, the Egyptian government has failed to deter an IS-led insurgency.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack “will not go unpunished” and that Egypt would persevere with its war on terrorism.
The terrorists descended on the al-Rawdah mosque in four off-road vehicles as hundreds worshipped inside. At least a dozen attackers charged in, opening fire randomly, the main cleric at the mosque, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq told The Associated Press by phone from a Nile Delta town where he was recuperating from bruises and scratches suffered in the attack.
He said there were explosions as well. Officials cited by the state news agency MENA said the attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades and shot men as they tried to run from the building. The terrorists blocked off escape routes with burning cars, three police officers on the scene told The Associated Press.
The attackers escaped, apparently before security forces could confront them.
Afterward, dozens of bloodied bodies wrapped in sheets were laid across the mosque floor, according to images circulating on social media.
Relatives lined up outside a nearby hospital as ambulances raced back and forth.
Resident Ashraf el-Hefny said many of the victims were workers at a nearby salt mine who had come for Friday services at the mosque.
“Local people brought the wounded to hospital on their own cars and trucks,” he said by telephone.
“Local people brought the wounded to hospital on their own cars and trucks,” he said by telephone.
No one claimed immediate responsibility for the attack. But the IS group affiliate has targeted Sufis in the past. Last year, the jihadists beheaded a leading local Sufi religious figure, the blind sheikh Suleiman Abu Heraz, and posted photos of the killing online.
El-Sissi convened a high-level meeting of security officials as his office declared a three-day mourning period.
In a statement, he said the attack would only “add to our insistence” on combatting extremists. Addressing the nation later on television, he said Egypt is waging a battle against militancy on behalf of the rest of the world, a declaration he has often made in seeking international support for the fight.
President Donald Trump denounced what he called a “horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshippers.”
“The world cannot tolerate terrorism” he said on Twitter, “we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!” He later tweeted that he would call el-Sissi and said the attack showed the need to get “tougher and smarter,” including by building the wall he has promised along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Israel expressed condolences and said it stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Egypt.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has taken aim at Saudi Arabia’s “adventurous” Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, urging him to note the fate of the region’s past autocratic rulers, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said the Saudi crown prince’s earlier remarks calling Iran’s supreme leader the “new Hitler” were “immature, misjudged and worthless” and said no one in the world gave them any regard.
“The mistakes by the adventurous Saudi crown prince, the latest of which is the scandalous intervention in Lebanese domestic affairs, have caused trouble even for their traditional allies.”
The prince said Thursday that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the “new Hitler of the Middle East” and must be stopped.
In a wide-ranging interview, Mohammed bin Salman, known in the region by the English acronym MBS, told The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman that he is working to build a coalition of nations to confront Iranian influence in the region.
Iran’s “supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East,” MBS told Friedman. “But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.”
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