235 killed in attack on Egypt mosque
Cairo : Militants killed 235 people at the Al Rawdah mosque in Egypt’s north Sinai region yesterday, detonating a bomb and shooting at fleeing worshippers, state media reported yesterday.
The bomb explosion ripped through the Al Rawdah mosque frequented by Sufis roughly 40km west of the North Sinai capital of El Arish before gunmen opened fire on those gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.
Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then planted a bomb outside. The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants’ vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.
State television reported at least 235 people were killed and 109 wounded in the Egypt mosque attack, the scale of which is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by Islamist extremist groups.
Egypt’s president declared three days of mourning, state television reported, as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met his security ministers to follow developments.
UK foreign minister Boris Johnson condemned the “barbaric attack” in a post on Twitter, while his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian expressed his condolences to the families of victims of the “despicable attack”.
Ahmed Abul Gheit, head of the Arab League, which is based in Cairo, condemned the “terrifying crime which again shows that Islam is innocent of those who follow an extremist terrorist ideology,” his spokesman said in a statement.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the mosque attack.The Islamic State group’s Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula. They have also targeted followers of the mystical Sufi branch of Sunni Islam as well as Christians.
Officials said around 40 gunmen arrived in four off-road vehicles blocked all escape routes by blowing up cars in area before opening fire on worshippers inside the mosque.
“They were shooting at people as they left the mosque,” a local resident who had relatives there told Reuters news agency. “They were shooting at the ambulances too.”
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but IS has targeted sufis several times in the area in the past.
Images circulating on social media shows bloodied bodies wrapped up in sheets laid across the floor of the mosque.
Egypt’s state news agency reported the casualty toll, citing “official sources,” revising it upward several times following the officials’ initial reports.
President Sisi has declared three days of mourning and vowed “deterrent and firm punishment”.
In a televised statement, el-Sissi said that the attack “will not go unpunished” and that Egypt will persevere with its war on terrorism. The suffering of the victims was not in vain, he added, and will only “add to our insistence” to combat terrorism.
Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit condemned the attack as a “terrifying crime which again shows that Islam is innocent of those who follow extremist terrorist ideology”.
UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said the horrible incident exposes the “ugly face of terrorism that does not respect the human soul and the sanctity of places of worship.”
UK Prime Minister Theresa May tweeted: “Appalled by the sickening attack on a mosque in North Sinai. Condolences with all those in #Egypt affected by this evil and cowardly act.”
Donald Trump said on Twitter: The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!
Paris’ mayor says the Eiffel Tower will go black at midnight in homage to the victims of the deadly assault in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
French President Emmanuel Macron also went to Twitter to send his “condolences to the victims of the terrible attack”
Locals are quoted as saying that followers of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, regularly gathered at the mosque.
Some jihadist groups, including so-called Islamic State (IS), see Sufis as heretics.
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