Sisi rallies troops in Sinai after IS attacks

CAIRO: Egypt’s president made an unannounced visit to the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday to rally troops following a wave of deadly attacks on security forces by Islamic State Jihadists, his office said.
“President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is inspecting troops and police in the North Sinai,” his office said without specifying where in the restive province.
“I have come to salute the heroes of the armed forces and to express to them my recognition,” he was quoted by the army’s spokesman as saying.
State television broadcast footage of Sisi, dressed in military fatigues, touring an army base and inspecting captured weapons.
The government called in air strikes on Wednesday after a spectacular attack claimed by the Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State in the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid left dozens dead.
The army said 17 soldiers and 100 militants had been killed. But medical and security officials said the death toll was at least 70 people — mostly soldiers — as well as dozens of Jihadists.
“We are still recovering the bodies of terrorists from the latest attack,” Sisi said, according to the army spokesman.
The violence poses a major test for Sisi, a former military chief who has pledged to eliminate the militants.
On Saturday, three children and a woman were killed in northern Sinai, medical and security sources said.
In one incident, the woman and two of the children died when a shell slammed into a house in Sheikh Zuweid. It was not immediately clear who fired the shell, which also seriously wounded another woman and a teenage girl.
In a separate incident, a roadside bomb targeting police and army vehicles killed a five-year-old child in the town of Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip.
Three other children and a woman were wounded.
Sisi said he saluted “every home, every mother whose child has died a martyr or been wounded for Egypt.”
The army, police and even officials have regularly come under fire, not only in Sinai, but in the capital, since then army chief Sisi ousted Islamist president Mohammed Mursi two years ago.
The Jihadists say they are acting in response to the bloody repression launched by the authorities after Mursi’s overthrow, which has seen at least 1,400 killed and thousands more jailed.
Most of the attacks are claimed by a group calling itself the “Sinai Province”. Formerly known as Ansar Beit al -Maqdis, it changed its name when it pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group last November.