6 killed in Arish car bombing, Province of Sinai claims responsibility

A car bomb targeting a police club in Arish on Wednesday killed six people and injured 10, Reuters reported.

Twitter accounts affiliated with the Province of Sinai, the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State, have published a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. The statement says that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber in retaliation for the arrest of women in Sinai.

The statement threatened that the worst is yet to come, and that the group will create “rivers of blood.”

The Province of Sinai is the largest militant group operating out of the peninsula, and has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks in the last two years. Most recently, the group claimed to have shot down a Russian passenger plane that crashed over North Sinai last week, killing all of those on board.

The group released a voice recording on Wednesday reasserting their claim. In the recording, a speaker for the group said that the organization has targeted Russia because of its role in the fight against the Islamic State. He responded to widespread skepticism at the group’s claim, saying that the organization is not obliged to reveal the mechanisms it used to target the aircraft and asked detractors to find alternate explanations for the crash.

The Egyptian Armed Forces previously declared that it had reclaimed “tight control over all roads” in the cities of Rafah, Sheikh Zuwayed and Arish in North Sinai, in a statement released in September, marking the end of the first phase of Operation Martyr’s Rights.

According to the privately owned Youm7, the operation, described by the military as a final and decisive battle against terrorism in the peninsula, has left 535 dead and 634 arrested.

Two weeks ago, the military announced the start of the second phase of the operation, stating that the objective of this stage is to develop the peninsula, after the first phase succeeded in getting rid of most of the terrorist presence in Sinai.