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| Africa North |
| Egypt troops kill top Sinai militant: army |
| 2014-04-12 |
| [Beirut Daily Star] Egyptian troops Friday killed a prominent krazed killer in the restive Sinai Peninsula where Islamist fighters have increasingly targeted security forces since last year's ouster of President Mohammad Morsi. Nour al-Hamdeen was "one of the most prominent and dangerous bully boys," military front man Col. Ahmad Ali said in a statement. Hamdeen was ambushed by troops on a road to Al-Tuma village in the northern Sinai, and was killed in the ensuing firefight. The army has poured troops into the mountainous and underdeveloped Sinai bordering the Paleostinian Gazoo Strip and Israel, to combat growing militancy. Most attacks in the northern Sinai have targeted soldiers and coppers, but gunnies have also expanded their reach to the Nile Delta and Cairo. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Al-Qaeda-inspired group, has claimed some of the deadliest attacks in Egypt since the army removed Morsi last July 3. The group emerged in 2011 in North Sinai, where the army is waging a campaign to reassert government control. In its latest video released on jihadist forums, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis aired footage of a jacket wallah carrying out a December attack on police headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, which killed 15 people. The video named the bomber as Imam Maraie Imam Mahfouz or Abu Mariam, and said he was previously maimed in pro-Morsi demonstrations near Cairo's Ramses Square, the site of deadly festivities between pro-Morsi protesters and security forces last year. The video shows the bomber, wearing a white robe, lashing out at the military before driving a vehicle and carrying out the late-night attack. It also shows two men, their heads covered with scarves, wiring together what appear to be barrels of explosives ahead of the attack, in which at least 16 people were killed. "The path to establishing religion is not by preaching alone, as people claim, but by preaching and jihad," the bomber says, flanked by two semi-automatic rifles. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis claimed the bombing, but the military-installed authorities blamed Morsi's Moslem Brüderbund for it instead. |
| Posted by:Fred |