Tuesday, April 27, 2021

ISIS Returns

 From The Daily Mail:

A separate piece of footage then shows two other militants executing two tribesmen in a similar fashion, after accusing them of fighting with the Egyptian armed forces. Salama had been missing since last November, the Coptic Church said, when he was kidnapped while walking along the streets of Bir al-Abed by jihadists in a car.  

A spokesman for the Coptic Church, which confirmed Salama's identity from the video, said he had been involved in rebuilding churches destroyed by Islamists in the region. He kept the faith till the moment he was killed,' the spokesman said.

'The church affirms its steadfast support of the Egyptian state's efforts in quelling hateful terror acts.' 

Egypt has been fighting a jihadist insurgency in the northern Sinai since at least 2011, including local tribal groups, Al Qaeda, and Wilayat Sinai - a pre-existing militant group that swore allegiance to ISIS in 2014.

Originally founded as Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis according to Stanford University's terror monitoring service, the group's initial aim was to rid nearby Jerusalem of western influence and eradicate any Israeli presence in Egypt.

But following the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarack in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, the group switched their attentions to driving the Egyptian army out of Sinai and assuming control of the region.

In 2012 the group carried out its first attacks - on a pipeline exporting gas to Jordan and Israel and on Israeli forces near the border.

When the army removed the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi from power in 2013, Ansar again switched its attentions to government forces, accusing them of suppressing jihadist groups.

A series of deadly and sophisticated attacks on Egyptian forces in 2014 that killed at least 50 soldiers saw the group dubbed 'the most dangerous in Egypt' by the New York Times, and saw the government launch counter-insurgent operations. Faced with the might of the Egyptian army, the group pledged allegiance to ISIS in November 2014 and renamed itself Wilayat Sinai, or Islamic State – Sinai Province.(Read more.)


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