Jihadist attack kills 11 Egypt troops: army
//International News Desk//
Eleven Egyptian soldiers were killed on
Saturday attempting to thwart a “terrorist” attack on the Suez Canal zone
abutting the Sinai peninsula, a hotbed of jihadist activity, the army said.
It was the heaviest loss of life the army had suffered in years in its
long-running campaign in and around the Sinai against militants loyal to the
Islamic State group.
Five soldiers were also wounded in the firefight on the eastern bank of
the canal, the army said, adding security forces were “continuing to chase
the terrorists and surround them in an isolated area of the Sinai”.
“These terrorist operations will not defeat the determination of the
country and the army to continue uprooting terrorism,” President Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi pledged on Facebook.
Washington condemned the “terrorist attack in the Sinai targeting members
of the Egyptian military” and expressed its condolences to the victims’
families.
“For decades, the United States has been and remains Egypt’s strong
partner in confronting terrorism in the region,” State Department spokesman
Ned Price said in a statement.
Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has been gripped by an armed insurgency for more
than a decade, which peaked after the ouster of late Islamist president
Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
In February 2018, the army and police launched a nationwide operation
against militants focused on North Sinai.
More than a thousand suspected militants and dozens of security personnel
have been killed since the start of operations, according to official
figures.
In November, Egypt agreed with Israel to boost its troop numbers around
the border town of Rafah to quell IS militants.
In August, the army said 13 militants had been killed and nine of its
soldiers were “killed or wounded” during clashes in the Sinai, without
indicating when the fighting had taken place.
In recent years, pipelines carrying Egyptian oil and gas to neighbouring
Israel and Jordan have been the primary targets of insurgent attacks.
