Egypt army says senior Islamic State cleric killed in Sinai

Airstrikes in peninsula reportedly kill 18 jihadists from group responsible for Palm Sunday attacks against Christians

By AFP 20 April 2017, 4:26 pm

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Illustrative. Smoke rises after a house was blown up in a military operation in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on November 20, 2014. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90/File)

CAIRO — The Egyptian military said Thursday it killed a senior Islamic State group cleric and 18 jihadists in airstrikes in the Sinai Peninsula where the extremists are waging an insurgency.

The announcement came after the jihadists claimed a series of attacks, including a shooting near a monastery this week and twin church bombings on April 9 that killed dozens.

Among the jihadists killed was “one of the prominent leaders of the so-called Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, the head of the religious affairs committee in the group,” the military said, without saying when the strikes occurred.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis was the name used by the jihadists in the Sinai before they pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in November 2014.

The jihadists have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

A general view shows people looking at the aftermath following a bomb blast which struck worshippers gathering to celebrate Palm Sunday at the Mar Girgis Coptic Church in the Nile Delta City of Tanta, north of Cairo, on April 9, 2017. (AFP Photo/Stringer)

The military has killed several of their top leaders, but the extremists have increasingly expanded their attacks from the Sinai to other parts of Egypt, especially against Christians.

The April 9 church bombings in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria followed a December suicide bombing in a Cairo church that killed 29 people, also claimed by IS.

On Wednesday, the interior ministry said security forces killed a gunman suspected of killing a policeman and wounding three others near St Catherine’s monastery in south Sinai the day before.

IS, which claimed the shooting, has threatened more attacks on Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of more than 90 million people.