The leader of the Islamic State’s affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula was killed in an airstrike along with dozens of the group’s fighters, the Egyptian army said Thursday.
Military forces “were able to kill the leader [of] Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the terrorist called Abu Doaa al-Ansari, and a number of his top aides in addition to more than 45 terrorist elements,” the Egyptian military’s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir, said in an Arabic statement posted to his Facebook page and translated by Agence France-Presse.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis pledged its allegiance to ISIS in 2014, and now calls itself Wilayat Sayna or ISIS-Sinai Province.
A military source who spoke with AFP said Ansari was the group’s “number one” commander. He and his fighters were “targeted with precise hits” against strongholds near the northern Sinai town of al-Arish, according to the army spokesman. Stores of weapons, ammunition, and explosives were also destroyed during the operation.
ISIS-Sinai Province has carried out multiple attacks against Egyptian security forces in recent years, and is the primary suspect in the downing of a Russian airliner that killed 224 people in the Sinai in October.
In a video published on Monday, the group — which has close ties to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, and in the past fired rockets at Israel’s southern region — threatened to turn Israel into “a graveyard for Jews.”
Egyptian authorities have claimed that Hamas has been crucial to the rise of ISIS-Sinai Province, transforming it from, in the words of one Egyptian official, “a gang of Bedouin with light weapons into a well-trained, well-armed group of 800 militants.” An ISIS commander met in December with Hamas officials in order to increase cooperation between the terrorist groups, especially in the area of arms smuggling.
These growing ties — which reportedly also include explosives manufacturing, communications and logistical assistance, and hospitalization for injured fighters — have enraged Egyptian officials, who recently confronted Hamas over its close collaboration with the Sinai-based terrorist group.
IDF Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai told the Arabic news site Elaph in February that the same tunnel network that Hamas uses to smuggle arms and explosives into Gaza also serves as a crossing for ISIS fighters, which Hamas is treating in Gazan hospitals in exchange for money and weapons. Israeli sources familiar with the situation told Elaph that Israel is keeping Egypt informed of ISIS’s movements in the Sinai and of the group’s relationship with Hamas. They also said that Israel provided the Egyptian military with aerial photographs of tunnel openings along the Sinai-Gaza border, which serve as a nexus for facilitation and cooperation between the two jihadist groups.
[Photo: Egyptian army / Twitter]