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Africa North
Islamic State group claims responsibility for North Sinai attacks
2017-01-11
Follow up to this story from yesterday.
[AlAhram] The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
murderous Moslem group has grabbed credit for Monday’s attacks on North Sinai police checkpoints which Egyptian authorities say killed eight coppers and one civilian.

The murderous Moslem group claimed that the corpse count was higher than that reported by Egyptian authorities.

"Twenty-five coppers were killed on Monday in a surprise attack launched by the Islamic State’s fighters on El-Matafe checkpoint in El-Masaeed neighbourhood west of al-Arish in North Sinai," the group’s Amaq news agency said in a statement.

On Monday, state-owned MENA agency quoted Egyptian security sources as saying that eight coppers and one civilian were killed and 22 others were maimed in two separate attacks by Islamist holy warriors on North Sinai checkpoints.

The Amaq statement said that a car rigged with a bomb went kaboom! at one of the checkpoints, after which Islamic State group gunnies killed the coppers who survived the kaboom. The group also claimed that it destroyed two armoured police vehicles.

According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Interior on Monday afternoon, the first attack took place at El-Matafe checkpoint in El-Arish and was carried out by around 20 holy warriors using rocket-propelled grenades and a car rigged with explosives.

The interior ministry said holy warriors also targeted El-Masaeed checkpoint on the Ring Road, killing a police conscript during an exchange of fire.

The ministry said security forces were able to "fight off the terrorist attack," killing five holy warriors and injuring three others.

The attacks came days after the Egyptian army said it was able to foil a plot by holy warriors to attack several North Sinai checkpoints.

The Egyptian army and police have been battling an entrenched Islamist insurgency for several years in North Sinai. Most of the attacks have been claimed by Sinai-based group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in November 2014.

Hours after the Monday attacks, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi spoke in a phone interview with prominent TV host Amr Adib about counterterrorism efforts by Egyptian security forces in North Sinai. El-Sisi said that terrorism operations in Sinai were part of "a plot by certain countries and apparatuses."
Oh? And which countries and apparatuses might they be?
The president added that throughout the last three years Egyptian security forces destroyed underground weapons caches in Sinai containing thousands of tonnes of explosives.
Posted by:trailing wife

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