At least 305 people, including 27 children, were killed and at least 128 injured when militants detonated a bomb and then shot people inside a mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Friday, The New York Times reports. The attack has been labeled as the deadliest terrorist attack in the country’s modern history.
The incident marks a new extreme in Egypt’s experiences with militant forces, as Coptic Christian churches have been main targets in ISIS attacks in Egypt. Now, with most of these latest victims being Sufi Muslims (a branch of Islam that ISIS views as heretical), a new level of the militant presence in Egypt has been introduced.
Egypt is reeling from the Friday attack on a mosque in Sinai that killed 305 people in the deadliest assault by Islamic extremists in its modern history https://t.co/ur5VS4Wgj4 pic.twitter.com/GOdVeCVBD0
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) November 26, 2017
CNN reports that 25 to 30 men wearing military combat uniforms entered the al Rawdah Sufi mosque with automatic machine guns and an Islamic State flag during the mosque’s Friday Prayers. The men, who arrived in five four-wheel drive vehicles, stood at the mosque’s entrances and in front of the building before the explosion of a bomb likely set off by a suicide bomber struck. The men even set cars outside on fire to prevent worshippers from escaping. When ambulances arrived to save the wounded, the gunmen also lit up those vehicles, causing some injured to escape in the back of cattle trucks.
Following the attack, Egypt called for three days of national mourning. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi met with the nation’s top security officials to discuss emergency plans, saying in a televised speech, “The military and the police will take revenge.”
Egypt mosque attack death toll rises to 305. Officials say one of the attackers carried an ISIS flag. https://t.co/R2bpvRQ1f3 https://t.co/s4AcRgGgyI
— CNN (@CNN) November 25, 2017
After the attack, Egyptian military forces oversaw airstrikes aimed at fleeing militants. While ISIS has yet to formally claim responsibility for the attack, the attack displays elements of a typical Islamic State strike.