Egyptian soldiers stand guard on the border between Egypt and Gaza, near Sheikh Zuwayid, the town at the center of conflict between the military and Islamic insurgents. File Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI |
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CAIRO, July 2 (UPI) -- Egypt launched a full-scale assault, including airstrikes, on Islamist militants on its Sinai Peninsula Thursday.
Reports of casualties varied, with security sources claiming 23 members of the insurgent group Sinai Province, affiliated with the Islamic State, were killed Thursday in clashes. Car bombs killed six security forces while 90 militants died Wednesday, a security official said. The surge in violence comes as Egyptian President Abel-Fatah al-Sisi promised to deal with militant groups who have been missing on the Sinai Peninsula since former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown two years ago.
The Sinai battles, and a series of rocket assaults and car bombings in Egypt by insurgents, come on the second anniversary of Morsi's removal, and days after Egyptian Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat was killed in a car bomb explosion in a Cairo suburb. Al-Sisi has presided over a crackdown on the pro-Morsi Muslim Brotherhood since he assumed office, with thousands arrested, hundreds killed and hundreds of others receiving death penalties in mass trials.
"We're in a real state of war," Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab said at a weekly cabinet meeting in Cairo, although Brig. Gen. Mohammad Samir claimed on state-run television the Sinai situation as "100 percent under control."
The pro-government newspaper El-Watan said warfare Wednesday and Thursday on the Sinai Peninsula involved the militants' use of sophisticated weapons, which included Russian-made anti-tank missiles, mortar fire, anti-aircraft guns and other guided missiles, as well as suicide attacks. Airstrikes by the Egyptian Air Force were centered on the northern Sinai town of Shiekh Zuwayid, near the border with Gaza, where witnesses said simultaneous raids by the militants struck five military checkpoints and a police station Wednesday.
Critics of al-Sisi's methods note his crackdown has failed to bring peace to Egypt or the removal of extremist elements on the Sinai Peninsula. The escalation in violence this week on the peninsula, bordering Israel and the Suez Canal, is also of concern to the United States, which values the global shipping channel and regards Egypt as a strategic ally against terrorism.
