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Thursday, November 30, 2017
Egypt mosque attack: death toll raised to 235
Adham Youssef in Cairo and agencies-Saturday 25 November 2017 13.07 GMT
Egypt’s military has responded with airstrikes directed at “terrorist”
locations and vehicles after hundreds of people were killed in a bomb
and gun assault on a mosque in the north of the country.
Egypt’s chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said the 305 people killed
included 27 children, while a further 128 people were wounded in the
attack on the Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, north Sinai.
In the deadliest attack in the country in recent memory, a bomb ripped
through the mosque as Friday prayers were finishing, before militants in
four off-road vehicles approached.
Sadeq said the attack was carried out by 25 to 30 militants, who
stationed themselves at the mosque’s main door and 12 windows before
opening fire on worshippers inside.
More than 50 ambulances ferried casualties from the mosque, about 25
miles (40km) west of the city of Arish, to nearby hospitals. Pictures
from the scene showed rows of bloodied victims inside the mosque.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it marks a major
escalation in a region where for the past three years Egyptian security
forces have battled an Islamic State insurgency that has killed
hundreds of police and soldiers.
The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, delivered a defiant
television address on Friday evening, vowing to respond with “brute
force” and offering condolences to the families of victims.
“This act will only increase our will and unity,” he said. “The police
and military will avenge our martyrs and restore peace and security.”
He added: “We will respond with brute force to combat these terrorists
and deviants ... This is an attempt to deter us from fighting terrorism
and to destroy our will, but we are steadfast, and I say to all
Egyptians, the battle you are fighting is the most honourable.”
Hours after the attack, Egypt’s military launched airstrikes on targets
in mountainous areas around Bir al-Abed, security sources and witnesses
said. The targets were described as vehicles used in the attack and
“terrorist” locations where weapons and ammunition were stocked.
Sisi, a former armed forces commander who presents himself as a bulwark
against Islamist militants in the region, convened an emergency security
meeting with his defence and interior ministers and intelligence chief
after the attack and declared three days of mourning.
One witness, a shop owner from Bir al-Abed, said local people heard a
massive blast followed by gunfire. When he arrived at the site of the
attack he saw people rushing to pick up the bodies and to offer help to
the injured. He said he saw at least 20 bodies wrapped in cloths and
blankets.
One resident whose relatives were at the scene told Reuters that the
attackers shot at people as they left the mosque, and also at the
ambulances. The attackers had also set alight nearby vehicles to try to
block routes away from the mosque.
The mosque belongs to a Sufi order – a mystical branch of Islam whose
followers are regarded by hardline Islamists as apostates because they
revere saints and shrines.
An Isis propaganda outlet had previously published an interview with the
commander of its “morality police” in Sinai who said their “first
priority was to combat the manifestations of polytheism including
Sufism”.
The attack came days before the annual celebrations of the prophet
Muhammad’s birthday. Festivals are being held by Sufi-affiliated mosques
around the country.
Another witness, a student who gave his name only as Mohamed, told the
Guardian he had heard calls for help emanating from other nearby mosques
after Friday’s attack.
“I went with my family and friends to the scene of the mosque and found
ambulances loading bodies and injured,” he said. “What happened in
al-Rawdah is a massacre against peaceful civilians.”
Egyptians walk past bodies following a gun and bombing attack at the Rawdah mosque. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
He said residents went to every pharmacy and clinic they could to gather medicine and instruments for local hospitals treating the wounded.
“In the Ber al-Abd hospitals, there was chaos,” he said. “Blood and
screaming were everywhere. We heard that [all] male members of one
family were killed, the elders, the youth and the children.”
Striking at a mosque would be a change in tactics for the Sinai
militants, who have usually targeted security forces since bloodshed in
the Sinai worsened after Sisi led the overthrow of President Mohamed
Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.
But jihadis have also targeted Sinai tribes working with the armed forces, branding them traitors for their cooperation.
In July at least 23 soldiers were killed when suicide car bombs hit two military checkpoints in the Sinai, an attack for which Isis claimed responsibility.
The local Isis affiliate, Wilayat al-Sinai (the governorate of Sinai),
also carried out the previous deadliest attack in the region when it
downed a Russian passenger jet carrying tourists back from the resort of
Sharm el-Sheikh in 2015, killing 224 people.
Militants have tried to expand beyond the largely barren, desert Sinai
peninsula into Egypt’s heavily populated mainland, attacking Coptic
Christian churches and pilgrims.
In May gunmen attacked a Coptic group travelling to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing 29.
The grand imam of al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, the centre of Sunni learning, condemned the attack as an “attempt to spread chaos”.
“After targeting Christians, the turn for mosques have come,” he said in
a statement. “As if terrorism wants to unite Egyptians in deaths and
chaos, nevertheless it will be defeated, and the will of Egyptians will
prevail.”
There was also international condemnation for the attack. The UN
security council and the secretary-general, António Guterres, issued a
statement calling the assault a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack”
and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
“The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and
discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their
existence,” US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, calling the
assault “horrible and cowardly”.
He later tweeted:
The UK foreign minister, Boris Johnson, condemned the “barbaric”
assault, while his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, expressed his
condolences to the families of victims of the “despicable attack”.
Ahmed Aboul 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 extremist terrorist ideology”, his spokesman said
in a statement.
Agence France-Press contributed to this report
