Alwaght- Sixteen terrorists have been killed and four arrested in Egypt's northern and central Sinai region in a massive anti-terrorism operation waged by military and security forces, the country’s army said on Sunday.
In the first announcement of casualties since the campaign was launched two days ago, the Egyptian military added that thirty other suspects have been captured and 66 targets, 4x4 vehicles, motorbikes and arms caches used by militants destroyed in extensive raids in the border region.
Operation Sinai 2018 was launched on Friday morning, involving land, naval and air forces, as well as the police and border guards, targeting "terrorist and criminal elements and organizations" in northern and central Sinai, as well as parts of the Nile Delta and the Western Desert.
"The air force targeted and destroyed 66 targets used by terrorist elements to hide from air and artillery attacks, and to escape from their bases during raids," the statement said.
"Sixteen militants have been killed," it added.
Egypt has for years been battling a Wahhabi-Takfiri insurgency based in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula that mainly targets security forces. The army said it has killed hundreds of militants in military operations there. Over the past few years, terrorists have been carrying out anti-government activities and fatal attacks, taking advantage of the turmoil in Egypt that erupted after the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in July 2013.
The Wilayat Sinai group, which is affiliated with the ISIS Takfiri terrorists, has claimed responsibility for most of the assaults.
In late November, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sis ordered the military to defeat terrorists in North Sinai within three months, a deadline that will expire at the end of February. He authorized chief of staff Mohamed Hegazy to use "brute force."
Egypt's presidential spokesman Bassam Rady affirmed in press statements on Sunday that the current "Sinai 2018" comprehensive military operation is a more sophisticated and extensive successor to a previous series of operations dubbed "Martyrs' Right," the first phase of which was launched in 2015 as part of Egypt's wider war on terror.
