Since the Friday attack on buses loaded with Coptic Christians that left at least 29 dead, Egyptians are saying that Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is unequipped to deal with terrorism in the country.
Anti-Sisi Egyptian group said on a Twitter post, “This is a call for all the freemen to join us in saying, #al-Sisi_is_incompetent.”
“Sisi has created this terrorism and is unable to deal with it,” the tweet said below a photo supposedly taken from the scene of the massacre.
ISIS claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, in which gunmen dressed in military fatigues stopped buses packed with Coptic Christians, ordered them to get out, and then shot them dead.
The group was on their way to a monastery near Minya province.
Many were killed with a single bullet in the head. Children were among the dead and injured.
However, the Egyptian army is not cracking down on ISIS targets in Egypt, which have the most significant presence in the Sinai Peninsula.
Instead, it launched massive airstrikes in an eastern Libyan port city of Derna, where it targeted the headquarters of the Islamist militia group, Derna Mujahedeen Shura Council (MSC).
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Egypt has “intelligence and evidence” connecting the targets in Libya to the ISIS attack in Egypt.
He added that attacking Libya was part of Egypt’s “legitimate self-defense,” according to an official statement.
It is worth mentioning that MSC is an Islamist umbrella group that oppose and resist ISIS in Libya.
This weekend, the group published a statement on Twitter that condemned and denied involvement in Friday’s attack against Christians.
The statement said, “It isn’t MSC policy to target unarmed civilians in Libya or in Egypt.”
It accused the Egyptian government of using the attacks as a “diversion tactic to distract the public’s attention from al-Sisi’s security and economic failure.”
An Egyptian blogger on Twitter said that al-Sisi is using the ISIS attack in Egypt as “a pretext for striking the Mujahedeen Council in Derna” and intervening in Libya.
The exiled Egyptian anti-coup TV presenter Osama Jaweesh said that al-Sisi was “fighting windmills in Libya,” and had killed civilians in the Libyan attack.
According to non-official sources, Coptic Christians make up about 10 % of Egypt’s population of 92 million.
In fact, Friday’s attacks are the latest in a series of massacres claimed by ISIS that have killed more than 100 Coptic Christians since December.
ISIS explicitly calls on its members to target and kill Coptic Christians. In February, it posted a hit-list of Egyptian churches.
Amnesty International said in a report that the Egyptian government “has failed to take action to protect Christians in North Sinai who has increasingly faced kidnapping and assassinations.”
Najia Bounaim, Deputy Director for Campaigns at Amnesty International’s regional office in Tunis, said “This terrifying wave of attacks has seen Coptic Christians in North Sinai hunted down and murdered by armed groups. No one should face discrimination — let alone violent and deadly attacks — because of their religious beliefs.”
