CAIRO: Gunmen attacked a packed mosque in Egypt’s restive North Sinai province on Friday and set off a bomb, martyring at least 235 people in one of the country’s deadliest attacks in recent memory, state media reported.
A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish before gunmen opened fire on the worshippers gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.
State television reported at least 235 people were martyred and 120 wounded in the attack.
Daesh’s Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and also civilians accused of working with the authorities, in attacks in the north of the Sinai peninsula.
The victims included civilians and conscripts praying at the mosque.
A tribal leader said that the mosque is known as a place of gathering for Sufis.
Many of those killed belonged to the interior ministry’s secretive National Security Service.
The military later conducted air strikes on the attackers, killing their leader Emad al-Din Abdel Hamid, a most wanted militant who was a military officer before joining an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Libya’s militant stronghold of Derna.
