[An Nahar] The Egyptian army said Tuesday that 450 jihadists are estimated to have been killed in its eight-month offensive against the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group in the Sinai Peninsula.
The military launched a large-scale operation dubbed "Sinai 2018" in February to rid Sinai of IS jihadists after an attack on a mosque in the north of the peninsula that killed more than 300 people.
Since the start of the campaign, 450 jihadists were presumed to have been killed "in the north and the center of Sinai by (soldiers) and police," army front man Tamer al-Rifai told AFP.
According to army figures, around 30 soldiers have been killed during the operation.
Jihadists began an insurgency in Egypt after the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, who was forced out by the military in the face of mass protests against his rule and that of his Moslem Brüderbund.
The army on Tuesday rejected criticism from rights groups over the impact on civilians of its campaign in Sinai.
It says that people in the peninsula support its operation and receive humanitarian aid
."All air strikes are carried out by the army outside residential areas," Rifai said on Tuesday.
Journalists are barred from going to areas targeted in the Sinai 2018 campaign, although the army organized a rare visit to the North Sinai capital El-Arish in July.
A countrywide state of emergency was imposed in April last year, following two suicide kabooms at churches which were claimed by IS.
On Tuesday, President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi extended the measure by a further three months.