Islamists pledging allegiance to ISIL yesterday killed over 27 Egyptian soldiers and injured 40 others in a string of coordinated simultaneous attacks on military and police outposts in the Sinai town of El Arish. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis – the Egyptian wing of the Islamic State – took credit for the attack. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, which also calls itself the Sinai Province, acknowledged the attacks through a series of tweets hours after the attack.
Egyptian intelligence have confirmed that the Islamists launched the attacks by setting off a car bomb outside an army base and firing a barrage of mortar rounds at multiple military and police checkpoints. Mortar rounds were also fired at the army-owned hotel. Active hostilities were still ongoing by late last night. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis had earlier in the day issued a formal warning to the Egyptian military that it will attack its establishment in the Sinai region. This is the worst attack to occur this month.
Intelligence sources have also confirmed that Islamists ambushed a military outpost in Rafah and murdered an army major. However, intelligence officers were also able to neutralize a terrorist who attempted to plant an explosive on a power transformer in the coastal city of Port Said.
The Islamists also attacked the regional police headquarters but details concerning the casualties are still scanty. The Islamist group has previously taken credit for kidnapping and assassinating police officers, and the attack on the police headquarters showcases an emboldened insurrection. The Islamists also seek to appeal to the local Bedouin populations who have repeatedly accused the Cairo authorities of neglect and mistreatment (especially by the police).
The building which housed the regional offices of al-Ahram, a government newspaper, was also destroyed completely in the attack.
Yesterday’s attack shows that the Egyptian military is still unable to contain an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai region despite a raft of measures put in place by the army to contain the Islamist insurrection. These measures include legislation of new anti-terror laws, restricting traffic flow in the region, placing the Sinai region under a state of emergency, placing a curfew; and demolishing homes – suspected to be terror assets – in Rafah town.
In November 2014, a similar attack by the same Islamist group in an army outpost killed about 26 soldiers. The Egyptian military has repeatedly accused Palestinian smugglers of providing logistics – through underground tunnels straddling the Egyptian-Gaza border – to the terrorists encamped in North-East Sinai. The military is currently planning to demolish all buildings located within a kilometer of the Egyptian-Gaza border.
The Islamist insurrection afflicting Egypt risks to destabilize the North African Nation, and it has compelled the government to adopt a heavy-handed counter-terrorism approach which has received considerable support from the citizens who deeply abhor the terrorists. The intensity of the Islamist insurgency rapidly escalated after Mohamed Morsi, the immediate former president and a Muslim Brotherhood leader, was dethroned by the military in July 2013. However, local discontent with the authorities risks fueling more localized insurrections.
