EgyptIn attacks on Egyptian targets, Sinai Islamists emulate ISIS tactics in Syria, Iraq
An ISIS-affiliated Islamist group says it is in control of several cities in northern Sinai, following heavy fighting Wednesday in which nearly seventy Egyptian soldiers and more than 100 Islamists were killed. It is not yet known how many civilians were killed in the fighting, which is continuing this morning. Analysts say that the escalation of the fighting in Sinai, and the Islamists’ changing tactics, mean that what we are witnessing is an all-out war between the Egyptian state and the militants, a war which is coming to resemble the war conducted by ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The comparisons between the Sinai Islamists and ISIS should not be overdrawn, though. There are many important differences between the situation in Syria and Iraq, on the one hand, and the situation in Egypt.
An ISIS-affiliated Islamist group says it is in control of several cities in northern Sinai, following heavy fighting Wednesday in which nearly seventy Egyptian soldiers and more than 100 Islamists were killed. It is not yet known how many civilians were killed in the fighting, which is continuing this morning.
The Islamists demonstrated an impressive level of coordination, attacking several targets simultaneously – targets which allowed them to take control of a mid-size town, at least for a short while, seize soldiers who will probably be used at some point for staged, gruesome executions, and capture armored vehicles and weapons.
Wilayat Sinai (the Sinai Region in Arabic), a jihadi group which declared allegiance to ISIS last fall, attacked the town of Sheikh Zuwaid, a few miles from Egypt’s border with Gaza and Israel, on Wednesday morning. The Guardian reports that the militants overran several army checkpoints and had taken control of several buildings. By midday the group said it had surrounded Sheikh Zuwaid’s police station.
ISIS also claimed it had captured other parts of the town, releasing a statement that read: “We have total control of many sites, and have seized what was in them.”
Wednesday attack marks an escalation of ISIS’s campaign in the Sinai, and it demonstrates an improvement in its capabilities there. The group and its local affiliates had already launched several bloody attacks on the Egyptian army and security forces in the north-eastern part of the peninsula, but the Islamists typically retreated quickly after the assaults. On Wednesday, the group’s fighters tried to advance and expand the area under their control.
To what extent ISIS will be successful in holding territory is not yet clear, Zack Gold, a Sinai-focused analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the Guardian. Any control of physical space would be significant, he said. “The invading of a city, taking over buildings — that is a new development, and it’s similar to the over-running of cities that we’ve seen in Iraq and Syria.”
“It would be different to the January events when there were multiple simultaneous attacks — but then [the militants] disappeared.”
