As the imam was about to deliver his Friday sermon in a mosque in Egypt’s volatile northern Sinai Peninsula, terrorists struck.
Shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great, the militants opened fire. In the resulting stampede, worshippers found the exits blocked with burning vehicles. In the end, 305 people, including 27 children, were gunned down and 128 were injured.
Ebid Salem Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a salt factory, told the Associated Press, “Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head, you get shot.”
“The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate,” he added. “Whoever they weren’t sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead.”
Other eyewitnesses said the militants fired on ambulances as emergency personnel tried to evacuate the wounded to hospitals.
The attack targeted a mosque frequented by Sufis, members of a mystic movement within Islam. Sufis are seen as heretics by the Islamic militants.
Prosecutor’s statement
Nabil Sadeq, Egypt’s chief prosecutor, said in a statement there were between 25 to 30 attackers. Some of them were masked and others were bare-faced. One, the statement said, carried a black banner with the declaration of the Muslim faith: There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. The banner matches those carried by the Islamic State, which has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
An Islamic State affiliate has been carrying out attacks in the region since 2013.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi vowed that the attack “will not go unpunished.”
Egyptian government warplanes attacked terrorist targets in the Sinai following the carnage at the mosque.
The Egyptian president ordered a mausoleum be built in memory of the victims of the attack.
U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the violence, calling it a “horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshippers.”
Neighboring Israel sent condolences to Egypt following the attack. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979 and maintain close security cooperation.
Battling Islamic State
Egypt’s security forces are battling an Islamic State insurgency, mostly in the northern region of Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police officers and soldiers since fighting there intensified in the past three years.
Militants have targeted security forces, but have also struck beyond the Sinai by hitting Christian churches and civilians in other parts of Egypt.
Egyptian media reported that Sissi met with top security officials, including the defense and interior ministers, immediately after the attack as security was stepped up around government buildings.
…