President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi on Friday vowed to avenge the brutal killing of over 30 army conscripts killed in a terrorist attack that hit a military unit in the early evening of Thursday. A radical militant group, Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, suspected of association with the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, announced its responsibility for the attack that left over 80 others wounded. It was followed by a series of other less serious attacks in Sinai and other governorates on Thursday and Friday. Al-Sisi was heading an official delegation to the African Union Summit in Ethiopia when the attack took place. Ahead of the abrupt end to his trip on Friday morning in order to return to Egypt, he told reporters that “Egypt is going through a tough war with a large underground group.” Al-Sisi alluded to the responsibility of the Muslim Brotherhood for the Sinai attack. “The Egyptian people turned against this group in the 30 June Revolution, and had it ruled for longer, even for two or three months longer, the price that Egypt would have paid would have been that much higher,” he said. He said “blood is the price the army pays for securing Egypt. That is the way war is.” The president appealed to the media to attend to its role and its influence over the public. He said that the economic conference planned for mid-March in Sharm El-Sheikh would go ahead as scheduled. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb attended a funeral march granted by the state to the victims of the attack along with members of their families at the military base in Almaza. The armed forces issued a statement vowing that the army would continue its efforts to combat terror in Sinai. The attack was the bloodiest of several that have targeted conscripts and army officers in Sinai. The first was in August 2012 only a few weeks after the inauguration of ousted former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood group. Since then the armed forces have announced a war against terrorism in Sinai. Late last year it was announced that this had caused collateral damage and it was decided to move the residents of Rafah to allow more aggressive action to be taken against the terrorists. Hours after the attack, a spokesman for the armed forces said it had been in retaliation for the “successful operations carried out by the army against the terrorist networks.” Ahead of the arrival of the president on Friday, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces convened to examine measures to deal with the situation in Sinai. Foreign capitals condemned the attack, and all Egypt's political figures. Top Muslim clergy also condemned the attack and the assailants.
