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15 extremists killed in security raid in Egypt's Sinai

Xinhua, February 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

At least 15 extremists were killed and four others were injured on Friday in a security air raid launched by the Egyptian Armed Forces on their hideouts at a desert area south of Sheikh Zuweid in the restive North Sinai province, a security source told Xinhua.

"The Apache raid that took place at the early hours of Friday killed 15 extremists, injured four others and destroyed four vehicles and five motorbikes that belonged to them," the source added, noting that the extremists belonged to the Sinai-based al-Qaida-inspired Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) group.

Egypt has been suffering a rising wave of terrorism since the ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi by the military in July 2013 and the security crackdown on his supporters that left at least 1,000 killed and thousands more arrested.

Anti-government attacks have since extended from Sinai to the capital Cairo and other provinces across the country, leaving hundreds of military and police personnel dead.

The AMB group, which has recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) militant group, claimed responsibility for most of the deadly attacks.

In October 2014, a car-bomb attack in North Sinai killed around 30 Egyptian soldiers. Later in January, a series of simultaneous terrorist attacks and suicide bombings in the same province killed more than 30 military and policemen in addition to 14 civilians.

Over the past 48 hours, over 50 extremists were killed in similar airstrikes in North Sinai. The security campaigns in the restive peninsula are part of the new Egyptian leadership's post-Morsi "war against terrorism."

Meanwhile, a military officer was killed and another was injured in the collapse of a newly-discovered smuggling tunnel they were inspecting in North Sinai's Rafah city.

Since Morsi's removal, his loyalists have been staging anti-government marches denouncing his ouster as "a coup." The Muslim Brotherhood group, Morsi's power base, was blacklisted by the new leadership as "a terrorist organization." Endit