Jihadists looking to Sinai for new home base, Egypt army warns

Spokesman says 53 terrorists killed and more than 600 detained since beginning of major operation against IS

CAIRO — After crushing blows in Iraq and Syria, global terrorists could be eyeing Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula as a new home base, the army said Thursday, as it presses an offensive in the region.

Cairo last week announced a major operation against jihadists across swathes of territory, including the volatile region which has been at the heart of a persistent Islamic State group insurgency.

The security sweep in the Sinai, Nile Delta, and Western Desert near the border with Libya comes as the country prepares for polls next month in which President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is seeking re-election.

Army spokesman Tamer el-Refai said at a press conference broadcast Thursday that intelligence showed that jihadists were planning “to create a new terrorist home base in another area that could potentially be the Sinai Peninsula.”

Injured people are evacuated from the scene of a terrorist attack on a mosque in Bir al-Abd in the northern Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, on November 24, 2017. (AP Photo)

The spokesman told a tightly controlled press conference that 53 jihadists have been killed since the start of the operation, while more than 600 people have been detained.

There was no way to independently verify the figures given.

In November, Sissi ordered his armed forces chief of staff to restore security in Sinai within three months, after terrorists killed more than 300 worshipers at a mosque.

Egypt has been under a state of emergency since April last year, after two suicide bombings at churches claimed by IS killed at least 45 people in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria.