Egyptian troops kill ISIS militants suspected of murdering Christian in Sinai

Nabil Habashy Salamah was a well-known community figure in the town of Bir Al Abd

Egyptian security forces launched a major assault against militants in the troubled northern part of the Sinai peninsula in 2018. Reuters

Egyptian security forces have killed three extremists thought to have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of a Coptic Christian in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.

A security operation had been conducted to find the suspects, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

The ministry said the extremists were killed in a shootout, but did not say when this happened.

Nabil Habashy Salamah was a well-known Christian community figure in the small town of Bir Al Abd. He was kidnapped in November by ISIS extremists.

On Sunday, the group posted a video online purporting to show three black-clad extremists shooting him as he kneeled in front of them in the desert.

Egyptian Army soldiers fire artillery during a major assault against militants in Al Arish, in a photo distributed by the Ministry of Defence in February. Reuters

Salamah, 62, is thought to have been the driving force behind the recent construction of a church in the town, which had become a longtime stronghold of extremists fighting the government.

The Coptic Orthodox Church, to which the vast majority of Egypt’s estimated 10 million Christians belong, mourned the death of Salamah on Sunday, saying he stayed true to his beliefs until the end.

Northern Sinai has been the scene of a years-long insurgency by extremists, now led by a local branch of ISIS.

Unlike ISIS in Iraq and Syria in the previous decade, they had never been able to wrest control of large swathes of territory in Sinai.

A surge of attacks came after Mohamed Morsi was deposed as Egypt's president in 2013.

That increase in attacks, which included bombing churches, ended when security forces launched a major offensive in the area in 2018.

The offensive has left little room for the extremists to operate, forcing them to find new tactics.

High-profile attacks such as car bombings have now been replaced with the kidnapping and murder of suspected informants or members of the tiny Christian community in Sinai.