Egypt kills 63 gunmen in north Sinai -- security sources

Military strikes back at Islamic State affiliate group after Wednesday’s assault that killed scores

Egypt on Sunday killed 63 Islamist gunmen in the northern Sinai Peninsula, carrying out a series of airstrikes and ground operations against an Islamic State affiliate group, security sources said.

Apache helicopters and infantry attacked hideouts in villages between the towns of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, on the border with the Gaza Strip, according to a Reuters report.

The sources earlier gave the militant death toll as 25.

The Egyptian offensive came several days after a string of coordinated assaults on Egyptian military and police officers by the Sinai Province, a group claiming affiliation with the Islamic State.

The army said 17 soldiers and over 100 militants were killed in Wednesday’s brazen attack in Sinai, although before the release of its official statement, several senior security officials from multiple branches of Egypt’s forces in the area had said that scores more troops also died in the fighting.

The assault lasted a whole day and was unprecedented in its size and coordination. The attack hit a string of army checkpoints and involved multiple suicide bombings and the siege of a main police station with heavy weapons.

It came in a week of bloodletting that saw Egypt’s prosecutor general assassinated outside his Cairo home by a massive car bomb, and a special forces raid on an apartment that killed nine members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood responded by calling for a “rebellion,” raising the prospect of a further uptick in violence.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry blamed all the past week’s violence on the Brotherhood, which it said was not only the main source of Islamic extremism, but also coordinated operations on the ground.

“All of these attacks were conducted days apart, and showed a level of sophistication and coordination that affirms the presence of organized terrorist activity perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood,” it said in a statement given to reporters on Saturday.

Egypt routinely blames the Muslim Brotherhood for violent attacks in the country.