235 killed in attack on mosque in Egypt

CAIRO: Attackers killed at least 235 worshippers including women and children during the Friday prayers in a bomb and gun assault on a packed mosque in Egypt’s restive North Sinai province, state media reported; the country’s deadliest attack in recent memory.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump denounced the “horrible and cowardly terrorist attack” in Egypt. “The world cannot tolerate terrorism; we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!” Trump tweeted.

A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis, roughly 40 km 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 TV reported at least 235 people were killed and 109 wounded in the attack, the scale of which is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by extremist groups. Egypt’s presidency declared three days of mourning, state TV 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 extremist terrorist ideology,” his spokesman said in a statement.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the 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. The victims of Friday’s attack included civilians and conscripts praying at the mosque.

A tribal leader and head of a Bedouin militia that fights IS told AFP that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis. The Islamic State group shares the puritan Salafi view of Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints. The jihadists had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising magic which Islam forbids, and abducted Sufi practitioners later released after “repenting”.

An IS propaganda outlet had published an interview earlier with the commander of its “morality police” in Sinai who said their “first priority was to combat the manifestations of polytheism including Sufism”.