EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) – More than a dozen civilians, as well as children, have been killed on the Sinai Peninsula in northern Egypt in the past two weeks due to explosive devices dumped in their homes by militants, security and fitness officials said Sunday.
Islamic State militants attacked several villages in the town of Bir al-Abd in July, forcing others to flee their homes. The army then secured the villages in August and allowed citizens to return home a few weeks later, authorities said.
Activists, however, had set traps in several houses that killed at least 14 people, adding six from the same circle of vanquished relatives on Saturday, authorities said. Reasons included women and children.
At least ten others have been injured since October 12 and have been taken to the city hospital for treatment, they said. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity, as they were legal to inform the media.
Bir al-Abd, the site of a horrific extremist attack on a mosque in 2017 that killed more than three hundred faithful, some of them parents who prayed with their young children. Tribes in northern Sinai have been heavily attacked by activists who consider their veneration for Muslims. saints and shrines as heretical, forcing a mass exodus of citizens of the impoverished region that has long been underdeveloped through government.
Violence and instability intensified after the army overthrew the country’s Islamist president in 2013 amid national protests against the divisive regime of the Muslim Brotherhood group. Since then, extremist militants have carried out attacks, basically against security forces and minority Christians.
The clash largely occurred out of the public eye, with news hounds and outdoor observers excluded from the area. The clash so far has not spread to the southern tip of the peninsula, where the popular Red Sea resorts are located.
In February 2018, the army introduced a major operation in Sinai that also encompassed parts of the Nile Delta and deserts along the country’s western border with Libya. Since then, the speed of Islamic State attacks in northern Sinai has decreased.