Sinai Province Releases a New Video Showing Executions and Snipers in Sinai Peninsula

ISIS-affiliated Sinai Province group has released a video showing a militant killing two soldiers as well as carrying out sniper and IED attacks in Sinai.

Sinai Province released “the gruesome 35-minutes video that shows two Egyptian soldiers dressed in orange jumpsuits being executed by an IS militant,” reported al-Arabi al-Jadeed.

The video identified the soldiers as Capt. Mohammad al-Qalawi and Conscript Magdy Mosaad.

According to local sources, the two soldiers had been captured from a military checkpoint in the city of al-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai.

Moreover, the latest ISIS propaganda video also contained footage of Egyptian soldiers being sniped at and military vehicles being targeted by roadside bombs.

In the same context, an ISIS militant has shot dead a police major in al-Arish.

Despite a massive military campaign against ISIS’s expansion in Sinai especially from the eastern peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, but it seems that the Egyptian security forces have failed until now to curb their power as the militants have kept up attacks in Sinai.

The attacks mostly include roadside bombings and ambushes, and regarding the targets; the group has mainly targeted security forces, but recently they attacked Coptic Christians and tourists.

The group claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from an Egyptian resort last year, killing all 224 people on board and it also claimed responsibility for the killing of a Coptic priest.

Meanwhile, human rights groups have accused the Egyptian military of committing numerous abuses in counter-insurgency operations against the group in Sinai. According to a Human Rights Watch report, the Egyptian government has evicted 3,200 families over the past two years and razed hundreds of hectares of farmland and thousands of homes in its bid to destroy smugglers’ tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip with Egypt’s northern Sinai peninsula.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the organization’s director in the Middle East and north Africa said,“Destroying homes, neighborhoods, and livelihoods is a textbook example of how to lose a counter-insurgency campaign.”