Over 230 Worshipers Killed in Terrorist Attack on Egypt Mosque
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled a stubborn Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) affiliate in the mainly desert region, and militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers.
State media showed images of bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El Arish, the main city in North Sinai.
Worshippers were finishing Friday prayers at the mosque when a bomb exploded, witnesses said. Around 40 gunmen set up positions outside the mosque with jeeps and opened fire from different directions as people tried to escape, witnesses said.
"They were shooting at people as they left the mosque,” said a local resident whose relatives were at the scene. "They were shooting at the ambulances too.”
The public prosecutors’ office said in a statement 235 people had been killed and 109 more wounded, Reuters reported.
Striking at a mosque would be a change in tactics for the Sinai militants, who have usually attacked troops and police and Christian churches.
The Sinai branch is one of Daesh’s surviving branches following the collapse of its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former armed forces commander who presents himself as a bulwark against militancy, convened an emergency meeting with his defense and interior ministers and intelligence chief soon after the attack, the presidency and state television said.
Security has long been one of the key sources of public support for the former general, who is expected to run for re-election early next year for another four-year term.
He promised the attack "would not go unpunished”.
"Justice will be served against all those who participated, contributed, supported, funded, or instigated this cowardly attack,” Sisi said in a statement.
US President Donald Trump, in a post on Twitter on Friday, called the assault a "horrible and cowardly terrorist attack”.
"The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence,” he added.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also condemned the attack and said Paris stood with its ally.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry also strongly denounced the deadly terrorist attack.
