Egypt’s pain deepens as body bags mount
27 children among over 300 deaths; anti-militant operations intensify
ISMAILIA: Egypt on Saturday said an attack on a mosque by militants in the country’s troubled region of northern Sinai has killed 305 worshippers, including 27 children, a dramatic increase in the death toll previously announced, which was 235.
A statement by the country’s chief prosecutor, Nabil Sadeq, said the attack on Friday left another 128 people wounded.
It said the attackers, estimated at between 25 and 30, arrived at the mosque close to the small town of Bir Al Abd in five all-terrain vehicles and positioned themselves at the main door and the facility’s 12 windows before opening fire.
They also torched seven cars parked outside the mosque, which belonged to worshippers inside.
Quoting testimonies given to investigators by survivors, the statement said some of the attackers were masked. Those who were not sported heavy beards and long hair. The militants wore camouflaged pants and black T-shirts, it added.
Gunmen brandished an Daesh flag as they opened fire through doorways and windows, officials said on Saturday.
“The worshippers were taken by surprise by these elements,” the prosecutor said in a statement.
Prosecutor’s office, citing interviews with wounded survivors as part of its investigation, linked Daesh militants to the attack on the Al Rawdah mosque.
Also on Saturday, Egyptian warplanes were in action over Sinai, according to the military, targeting several vehicles in which some of the culprits of the attack were traveling. All passengers of the vehicles were killed, it added. It was impossible to independently verify the claim since the media is virtually banned from working in Sinai.
The chief prosecutor’s statement was the most detailed by authorities on the attack, the deadliest by extremists in Egypt’s modern history.
The account it gave generally agreed with what witnesses told The Associated Press on Saturday in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, where some of the wounded are hospitalised.
They spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshippers. They spoke of some jumping out of windows, a stampede in a corridor leading to the washrooms and of children screaming in horror. Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.
CAIRO: Egypt mourned on Saturday as the death toll from a gun and bomb assault at a mosque in the Sinai Peninsula soared above 300, including children, in the deadliest attack the country has witnessed.
The army said warplanes had struck militant hideouts in the insurgency-wracked North Sinai in retaliation.
According to the state prosecution, up to 30 militants in camouflage lying the Daesh group’s black banner had surrounded the mosque and proceeded to massacre the worshippers during weekly Friday prayers.
Twenty-seven children were among the dead, it said.
Daesh has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but it is the main suspect as the mosque is associated with followers of the Sui branch of Sunni Islam.
Funerals for the victims were held overnight and many were buried unwashed in their bloodied clothes, according to the Islamic burial practices for martyrs, security and medical oficials said.
President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi declared three days of mourning and vowed to “respond with brutal force” to the attack, among the deadliest in the world since the Sept.11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
“The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period,” he said in a televised speech.
Hours later Egyptian air force jets pursued the “terrorists and discovered several vehicles used in the terrorist attack, killing those inside near the vicinity of the attack,” an army spokesman said in a statement.
The state prosecutor’s ofice said in a statement that 305 people were killed and 128 wounded in the assault on the mosque roughly 4km west of the North Sinai capital of El Arish.
It said the attackers, with long beards and hair often seen on militants, had arrived in ive all-terrain vehicles to surround the mosque.
Witnesses said they heard gun shots and explosions before the assailants entered the mosque, according to the prosecution.
One of the wounded, Magdy Rizk, said assailants wore masks and military uniforms, and that extremists had previously threatened people in the area.
Relatives visited victims in hospital in the city of Ismailia near the Suez Canal where the wounded were taken for treatment, a photographer reported.
Locals and relatives of people living in the village where the attack happened said the mosque was the most prominent in the area.
“This is the largest mosque in the area. It is the parent mosque, where events take place, funerals and weddings. When full it has 600 or 700 people,” said Ahmed Sweilam, whose cousins live in the village. “Darkness pervades the village now.” World leaders voiced outrage. US President Donald Trump denounced on Twitter the “horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenceless worshippers.”
Sheikh Ahmed El Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s Al Azhar, Egypt’s highest institution of Sunni Islam, condemned “in the strongest terms this barbaric terrorist attack.”
A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that ights Daesh said that the mosque is known as a place where Suis gather.
The militant group has also killed more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, forcing many to lee the peninsula.
The military has struggled to quell the militants who pledged allegiance to Daesh in November 2014.
The group also claimed the bombing of a Russian plane that killed all 224 people on board after takeoff from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh on Oct.31, 2015.