The ISIS affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula continues to be one of the most active affiliates anywhere outside of Iraq and Syria, today ambushing an Egyptian police convoy, killing at least 18 police and wounding a number of others.
The slain included two lieutenants, according to officials, while a brigadier general was also wounded in the attack. There was no word of ISIS casualties in the incident, the deadliest since a July attack in the city of Rafah.
Egypt’s Prime Minister condemned the attack as a “traitorous incident,” vowing to respond with the military junta’s full force. This has been the same response the junta has had to every other ISIS incident in Sinai in the past few years.
Which has analysts increasingly doubtful that the government has any handle on the ISIS affiliate, which has continued to be able to carry out deadly attacks across the peninsula, and suffers very little operationally from the large number of casualties the military claims to inflict in retaliation.
“Police” don’t travel in units so big they can lose 18 dead and a lot more wounded. This was Army. It lost an ambush engagement.