Targeted Sinai mosque frequented by Egyptian security officers and their families

Up to 235 dead, scores wounded in terrorist massacre at Sinai mosque
Nov 24, 2017 @ 14:45

Debkafile

More than 285 were killed and scores injured when a suicide bomber detonated explosives Friday from inside the congregation of the Al Rawdah mosque at Bir Abed in northern Sinai, 40km west of El Arish. 

This mosque is frequented by Egyptian security officers posted in the region and their families. When worshippers, some of them injured, poured out of the mosque, they came under fire from ISIS gunmen riding off-road vehicles, who were waiting outside to shoot people trying to escape. 

The terrorists then turned their guns on the 50 or more ambulances evacuating the many injured and disappeared in the desert as Egyptian security vehicles arrived on the scene.

Egyptian president Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi called an urgent conference of security officials and announced three days of national mourning. 

In three years of battling relentless terrorist attacks by the Islamic State’s Sinai branch, the Al Rawdah mosque outrage is the most deadly Egypt has ever known. 

The site is esteemed as the birthplace of the cleric Sheikh Eid al-Jariri, who is considered the founder of the mystical Islamic branch of Sufism in the Sinai Peninsula. This form of Islam is considered heretical by some conservatives and extremists like the Islamic State group. 

The Tel Arish road to Rafah, the crossing point from Sinai into the Gaza Strip, was closed.

[END REPORT]

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