CAIRO: Armed attackers killed 235 worshippers in a bomb-and-gun assault on a mosque in Egypt’s restive North Sinai province on Friday, the country’s deadliest attack in recent memory.

A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis, roughly 40km west of the North Sinai capital of El Arish, before assailants opened fire on those offering Friday prayers.

The scale of the attack is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by militant groups. Witnesses said around 40 attackers had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles and planted a bomb outside.

The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants’ vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque. “Four groups of armed men attacked the worshippers inside the mosque after Friday prayers. Two groups were firing at ambulances to deter them,” said Mohamed, a witness.

The mosque is said to have been built near the birthplace of the founder of Sufism in Sinai

Egypt’s presidency declared three days of mourning, state television reported, as President Abdel Fattah al Sisi met his security ministers to follow developments.

Britain’s Foreign Minister Boris Johnson condemned the “barbaric attack” in a Twitter posting, while his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian expressed his condolences to the families of victims of the “despicable attack”.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

The militant Islamic State group’s Egypt branch has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, and targeted followers of Sufism as well as Christians.

The mosque is believed to have been built near the birthplace of Sheikh Eid al Jariri, a Sufi considered the founder of Sufism in the Sinai peninsula.

The IS shares the puritan Salafi view of Sufis as heretics for seeking the intercession of saints.

The militants had previously kidnapped and beheaded an elderly Sufi leader, accusing him of practising magic — forbidden in Islam — and abducted Sufi practitioners, but later released them after they “repented”.

An IS propaganda outlet had published an interview earlier with the commander of its “morality police” in Sinai who said their “first priority was to combat the manifestations of polytheism, including Sufism”.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2017