BICOM

At least 305 people died in an attack launched during Friday prayers at a mosque in Bir al-Abd in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt’s public prosecutor said that up to 30 attackers took part. No group has yet claimed responsibility, but it is believed to have been perpetrated by Islamic State’s Sinai Province, the group formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. Officials said that the gunmen carried IS flags.

Intelligence agencies in the region believe there are approximately 800-1,500 operatives in Sinai who are affiliated to ISIS. Some of them are residents of Sinai, others came from the Egyptian mainland, and a minority are foreign fighters from Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has vowed to respond to the attack with “the utmost force”.

Israeli analysts have examined in detail why Egyptian armed forces have not been able to significantly reduce ISIS capability in the area. Amos Harel, wrote an article in Haaretz entitled: “Astonishing Egyptian failure has Israel worried”. He said “the ineffectiveness of the Egyptian security forces cries out to the heavens, especially when we remember the foreign media’s reports that Israel has been extensively helping Egypt in intelligence and the use of drones against Islamic State strongholds”.

Alex Fishman in Yediot Ahronot notes that Egyptian claims that the removal of ISIS from Sinai have been proven to be “optical illusions” while Avi Issacharoff in the Times of Israel writes that the attack shows the “extent of the difficulty facing the Egyptian army in its efforts to counter the Islamist insurgency in the Sinai”.

Israeli intelligence believes that territorial defeats of ISIS in Syria and Iraq are liable to accelerate the efforts by ISIS loyalists in Sinai to organise with the objective of placing both the Egyptian Army and Israel in its sights. ISIS in Sinai has already recruited significant numbers of veterans of fighting in Syria and Iraq, and this could increase in the coming months.