EL ARISH // At least 53 Egyptian soldiers were killed and 53 wounded in the northern Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday as militants unleashed simultaneous attacks on army checkpoints.
Fifty militants were also killed in fierce fighting that started early in the morning and was still raging at the end of the day, in the bloodiest battle in Sinai since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
It came as Egypt’s cabinet approved draft anti-terrorism and election laws, finally opening the way to setting a date for parliamentary elections.
It approved a “package of draft laws that achieve swift justice and retribution for our martyrs” but gave no details.
President Abdel Fattah El Sisi pledged on Tuesday to step up the battle against militants after Egypt’s chief prosecutor was assassinated in Cairo.
Wednesday’s assaults focused on the town of Sheikh Zuweid and hit up to 15 military checkpoints. The militants took soldiers captive and seized weapons and armoured vehicles.
Scores of militants besieged the town’s main police station, shelling it with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades and exchanging fire with dozens of policemen inside.
Sinai Province, a group loyal to ISIL, claimed responsibility for the attacks.
It said its fighters hit 15 army and police checkpoints and staged three suicide bombings, two at checkpoints and one at an officers’ club.
“This specific attack is by far the worst we’ve ever seen,” said Daniel Nisman, chief executive of risk consultancy the Levantine Group.
“It’s not a hit and run. This is what they used in places like Syria and Iraq to actually capture and hold territory.”
Later in the day, a special forces team killed nine members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in a raid on an apartment in Cairo, security officials said.
The team was fired on when they entered the home and returned fire, killing nine men.
One of the dead was Nasr Al Hafi, a former deputy in the lower house of parliament for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, while the other was a Brotherhood leader, Abdel Fattah Mohamed Ibrahim.
Egyptian officials and pro-government media have blamed a series of recent attacks on ousted president Mohammed Morsi’s Brotherhood movement, which is officially branded a terrorist group.
The Brotherhood has denied involvement in the attacks.
* Associated Press with
additional reporting by Reuters
