Terrorist attack kills 11 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai

Eleven Egyptian soldiers were killed on Saturday attempting to impede a “terrorist” attack on the Suez Canal zone abutting the Sinai Peninsula, a hotbed of jihadist activity, the army said in a statement.

Five soldiers injured in the combat on the eastern bank of the canal, the army said. Adding, that the security forces were “continuing to chase the terrorists and surround them in an isolated area of the Sinai.”

“A group of takfiri elements attacked the point of pipelines of western Sinai,” the military spokesman said, in a statement on Facebook.

“These terrorist operations will not defeat the insistence of the country and the army to continue uprooting terrorism,” President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi vowed on Facebook. Adding his sincere condolences to martyrs’ families.

Egypt declared war on the group following the military coup in 2013 led by al-Sisi.

Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has been dominated by an armed rebellion for more than a decade, which peaked after the eviction of the Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The army and police initiated a countrywide operation against militants focused on North Sinai, in February 2018.

In recent years, pipelines carrying Egyptian oil and gas to Israel and Jordan have been the initial targets of the rebellious attacks.