IS says behind Sinai attack killing 12 soldiers – Checkpoint hit using 4 wheel drives rigged with explosives

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CAIRO, Nov 25, (Agencies): The Islamic State militant group said on Friday it was behind an attack on a security checkpoint in Egypt’s North Sinai province that, it said, killed 15 soldiers. The Egyptian military said the attack on Thursday killed 12 soldiers.

A statement from the militant group said it blew up the checkpoint, adding: “A number of caliphate soldiers attacked a checkpoint belonging to the apostate Egyptian army in the Sabeel village, southwest of Arish city, and the following clashes using light and medium weapons were able to kill 15 of the checkpoint’s elements.” The death toll from an attack on an Egyptian military checkpoint on Thursday in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula has climbed to 12, medical sources said on Friday. The military said late on Thursday that militants had killed eight soldiers and that it had killed three attackers.

An Islamist insurgency in the rugged, thinly populated Sinai has gained pace since the military toppled President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement, in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule. The militant group staging the insurgency pledged allegiance to Islamic State in 2014 and adopted the name Sinai Province. It is blamed for the killing of hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and policemen since then. “An armed group of terrorists elements attacked a checkpoint in North Sinai on Thursday night using four wheel drives rigged with explosives,” the military said in its statement.

Medical sources said four more bodies were found on Friday, bringing the death toll to 12 soldiers out of the checkpoint’s 31-strong force. Twelve soldiers were injured, six unharmed and one was missing. Eyewitnesses said security forces set up several extra moving and static checkpoints in and around Arish city, the capital of North Sinai province, and were searching for the culprits.

The attack took place south of Arish. The army has been battling an Islamist insurgency in northern Sinai which has escalated since the military overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. The government says hundreds of police and soldiers have died in the attacks, which have also hit Cairo and the Nile Delta. On Nov 4, gunmen killed a top Egyptian army officer outside his home in the northern Sinai. Most of the attacks have been claimed by the Egyptian IS affiliate.

Thursday’s attack was the deadliest since an assault on a checkpoint killed 12 soldiers and wounded six others in the Sinai peninsula. IS claimed responsibility for that attack. The group also said it was responsible for the downing of a Russian plane over Sinai in October 2015 which killed all 224 people on board, most of them Russian holidaymakers.

In February, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi acknowledged for the first time that “terrorism” was behind the crash, although the government has not yet issued an official report on its cause. Sisi had previously dismissed as “propaganda” the IS claim that it downed the airliner. The prosecution said last week that Egypt would try 292 jihadist suspects over plots to assassinate Sisi and the Saudi crown prince and for carrying out attacks in the Sinai Peninsula.

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