Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday blamed the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood for bombings that killed at least 30 people in the North Sinai Governorate two days earlier and declared that Egypt was “fighting the strongest secret organization of the last two centuries.”
Al-Sisi leveled the accusation even though a Sinai-based militant group with links to the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks and released photographs as proof.
The Brotherhood routinely denounces the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as militants in Sinai for their violence. Those groups, in turn, criticize the Muslim Brotherhood for its focus on bottom-up political change, mocking it as little more than a tool of secular Arab governments and the West.
Photo: Reuters
The organization, Egypt’s main Muslim opposition group, won a general election before al-Sisi led a military takeover in 2013, and he often blames the group for any antigovernment violence.
In his first significant public statement since the attack, al-Sisi appeared shaken and angry.
He insisted that Egypt was “paying the price” for ending the rule of what he called a terrorist group at the peak of its power — a universally understood reference to the military ouster of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader, in July 2013.
Al-Sisi said that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood had told him a few weeks before Morsi’s ouster “that they would be bringing people from all over the world” to fight Egyptian citizens, from “countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Libya.”
Surrounded by a phalanx of uniformed military officers, al-Sisi also accused unnamed foreign countries of abetting the attacks.
His supporters frequently accuse the governments of Qatar, Turkey and Sudan of aiding the group.
“There are some countries that are led by leaders of this terrorist organization,” he said. “Do you think these countries will leave us alone?”
Egyptian health and security officials stopped providing accounts of the number killed in recent attacks after deaths reached 30. State news outlets reported that officials said it was up to the military to disclose such details.
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