By Dahlia Kholaif – Wall Street Journal –
Islamic State extremists attacked an army checkpoint in Egypt’s restive Sinai peninsula, killing 12 soldiers in the latest of a series of assaults that have claimed the lives of hundreds of government forces and police in the area.
Insurgents driving a sport-utility vehicle attacked the Hasana checkpoint in the northern Sinai, where the army has been engaged in a three-year war against militants, an army spokesperson said. Another six military personnel were wounded, while 15 insurgents were killed.
The Sinai is home to an entrenched insurgency led by Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, which took responsibility for Friday’s violence in a statement distributed on social media.
Sinai Peninsula, Islamic State’s local branch and the deadliest Egyptian militant group, regularly strikes military and police targets in Sinai. It claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian passenger jet in October 2015, in which 224 people died following takeoff from the Red Sea resort city Sharm El Sheikh. Egypt’s once-lucrative tourism sector crashed following that downing.
Friday’s attack “may indicate an escalation in tactics after a relatively long period of relying mainly on [improvised explosive devices] and sniper attacks,” said Mokhtar Awad, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.
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Despite a yearslong push by the army, the country’s network of militant groups, largely based in the sparsely-inhabited northern Sinai, have been able to extend their area of operations as far as densely populated regions of the Nile Delta.
On Sept. 29, the country’s assistant prosecutor general survived a car bomb assassination attempt when he was on his way home from his office in New Cairo, near the capital. The Hasm movement, a group that had been little known despite previous assassination bids targeting senior officials, claimed the attack.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/militants-kill-12-egyptian-soldiers-in-sinai-1476452087 (abridged)