Interior Ministry says it killed top Province of Sinai leader in Cairo

Interior Ministry forces have killed a top Province of Sinai leader who they allege was behind several terrorist operations targeting the Armed Forces, diplomatic missions and civilians, the ministry said in a statement released Monday.

Formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdes, the Sinai-based militant group emerged after former President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster in 2013 and changed its name to Province of Sinai after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in November 2014.

The Province of Sinai has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks over the past two years, most recently the downing of a Russian passenger plane over Sinai last Saturday that killed all 224 people on board.

Ashraf Ali al-Gharably was “one of the most dangerous fugitive terrorists and inflicted heavy losses on a number of key state facilities, killing many innocent victims and martyrs,” the Interior Ministry statement said.

Gharably was fatally shot as he exchanged fire with security forces after they set up checkpoints around his “operation center” in Cairo’s Marg district, the statement said. He was reportedly in possession of a 9-mm pistol.

The militant leader was based out of that operation center for the past two years, where he planned and organized major terror attacks, the ministry claimed.

They accused him of orchestrating the abduction and beheading of Tomislav Salopek, a 30-year-old Croatian citizen working in Egypt, just outside Cairo in August 2015; the car bombing of the Italian Consulate in downtown Cairo in July 2015; a shooting attack targeting the Niger Embassy in Giza in July 2015; and the bombing of the Karnak Temple in Luxor in June 2015.

The ministry also holds Gharably responsible for planning the abduction and execution of US petroleum employee William Henderson in the Western Desert in December 2014; the failed assassination attempt of former Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim in Cairo in September 2013; deadly attacks against security forces in the Alamein and the Farafra Oasis; and the bombings and attempted bombings of police stations in Port Said and Giza, along with acts of carjacking and armed robbery.

Security forces claim to have killed hundreds of terrorist operatives since the military-led ouster of Morsi in July 2013, mostly in the Sinai Peninsula. But recently, terror operations have spread from Sinai to mainland Egypt.

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch and Egypt’s state-appointed National Council for Human Rights, at least 2,600 people were killed in nationwide violence from July 2013 to the end of 2014. These fatalities reportedly include 700 security personnel, 1,250 civilians identified as Muslim Brotherhood supporters and another 550 civilians.

Journalists have very limited access to turbulent peninsula, especially North Sinai, and are largely prevented from reporting on security operations there. Security claims regarding counter-terrorism operations and the liquidation of armed Islamist elements are nearly impossible to verify independently.