Decapitated body found in Egypt’s Sinai

The decapitated body of a man was found Friday in a town in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, security officials said, in the latest in a series of beheadings allegedly carried out by jihadists.

Local residents found the body on the side of a road in Sheikh Zuweid, near North Sinai’s provincial capital of El-Arish.

Friday’s gruesome find comes after Egypt’s deadliest jihadist group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, claimed it beheaded four Sinai residents in August.

The men were accused of being “Israeli informants” who helped target and kill some of the group’s members.

Egypt’s military has been carrying out a vast offensive against jihadist groups in the north of Sinai since militants stepped up attacks following the army’s ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013.

Sinai has turned into a hotbed for extremist groups who have killed scores of security personnel since Morsi’s ouster.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), initially used to launch rocket attacks against Israel, but since Morsi’s ouster it has claimed deadly attacks in the Sinai, the Nile Delta and in Cairo.

The group says its attacks are in retaliation for the brutal government crackdown against pro-Morsi Islamists that has left at least 1,400 dead and about 15,000 jailed.