Egyptian security forces mistakenly killed 12 people, including Mexican tourists, while chasing extremists in the country’s vast Western Desert, drawing condemnation and calls for an investigation from Mexico.
A joint police and military operation “chasing terrorist elements” on Sunday “mistakenly” targeted four pickup trucks carrying Mexican tourists, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
The ministry did not give a breakdown of the casualties, but said “the incident led to the death of 12 Mexicans and Egyptians and the wounding of 10 others.”
It said the tourists were in an area that was “off-limits,” but did not provide an exact location.
The Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs said at least two Mexican tourists were killed.
“Mexico condemns these incidents against our citizens and has demanded an exhaustive investigation about what happened from the government of Egypt,” Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said on Twitter.
The Mexican ambassador to Egypt visited five other nationals being treated at the Dar al-Fouad hospital in Giza, a southwestern Cairo suburb, where they were listed in stable condition, according to the secretariat.
The secretariat gave few details about what happened, saying an “undetermined” number of Mexican tourists were attacked “in circumstances that are still not clear.”
The incident was likely to raise further concerns for Egypt’s vital tourism industry, which has been struggling to recover from years of political and economic chaos.
The Western Desert, a popular destination for tour groups, extends from the suburbs of Cairo to the Libyan border.
A senior Egyptian Ministry of Tourism official told reporters the incident took place as the tourists were traveling between Cairo and the Bahariya Oasis, about 350km southwest of the capital.
A local tour operator said the convoy had stopped on the roadside to have lunch before they reached their hotel.
A police source said special forces were carrying out an operation involving air support about 150km west of Bahariya.
The interior ministry did not indicate whether the tourists were targeted with automatic weapons or aerial bombardment during the operation.
The desert is also a militant hideout and Western embassies have long warned against non-essential travel to the area.
Last month the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State group beheaded a young Croatian in the Western Desert who was working for a French company and has also launched numerous attacks against security forces.
The Islamic State in Egypt said in a statement that it had “resisted a military operation in the Western Desert” on Sunday, but provided no other details.
After the military overthrew former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, Cairo has been struggling to quell a Muslim extremist insurgency, which is focused mainly in their primary holdout in the country’s east, the Sinai Peninsula.
The country has one of the region’s most powerful and well-equipped militaries and was further boosted by recent deliveries of F-16 strike aircraft by Washington and Rafale fighter jets from France.
Last week, the army launched an operation in the Sinai against the Islamic State, which it said killed 56 militants.
The army often reports large death tolls among the insurgents, but they are impossible to verify and there has been little noticeable effect on the extremist group’s ability to carry out deadly attacks.
The government says hundreds of police and soldiers have been killed, many of them in attacks claimed by the Islamic State’s Sinai Province affiliate.
After launching spectacular attacks targeting security forces in its North Sinai bastion over the past two years, militants in Egypt are increasingly adopting tactics similar to the main Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
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