BY: NewsPeddlers
At least 11 members of the Egyptian
military, including an officer, have been killed in an armed attack on the
Sinai Peninsula, an army spokesman has said, adding that the security forces
“foiled a terrorist attack” on a water-lifting station east of the Suez Canal.
Five security personnel were also injured in the attack. Aljazeera
affirmed in its report that “the terrorist elements are being chased and
besieged in one of the isolated areas in Sinai,” the spokesman added in a
statement on Saturday.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi
mourned the death of the troops, vowing in a Facebook post to continue fighting
the rebels and “uprooting terrorism.”
The military gave no further details or the attack’s precise
location, but two northern Sinai residents told Associated Press the attack
took place in the town of Qantara in the province of Ismailia, which stretches
eastwards from the Suez Canal.
No group claimed responsibility for
Saturday’s attack yet, one of the deadliest attacks against Egyptian security
forces in recent years.
Last week, suspected fighters blew up a natural gas pipeline in
northern Sinai’s town of Bir al-Abd, causing a fire but no casualties.
Egypt has been battling armed groups loyal to ISIL
(ISIS) in the Sinai Peninsula which intensified after the military
overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi – the country’s first
democratically-elected president – in 2012.
SOURCE: ALJAZEERA