Click here to watch: ISIS Franchise Growing Much Stronger in Sinai, Egyptian Border With Israel
A vehicle explodes. Two trucks full of armed men race closer to the resulting crater at the Karm el-Kawadees army camp in North Sinai. The black-clad militants chase the survivors, killing all the soldiers. All of it is captured on video.
At least 31 Egyptian soldiers were killed in the October attack, the deadliest to date committed by the Sinai-based militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Champions of Jerusalem). ABM militants released video of the ambush in mid-November -- just days after pledging allegiance to ISIS, the Islamic terror group that now controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
The footage, which also shows a number of drive-by shootings and roadside bomb blasts, suggests that the group's firepower and strategic planning is becoming more sophisticated. ABM operates primarily in Northern Sinai, an area where rolling sand dunes butt up against the Mediterranean Sea and stretch to rocky mountains in the center of the Sinai Peninsula. For years this corner has been dubbed "the most dangerous part of Egypt."
Since 2011, the group has been attacking Israeli interests in Sinai by repeatedly blowing up a gas pipeline leading from the Egyptian Red Sea to Israel. The group stepped up the frequency of its raids after Egypt's army overthrew President Mohamed Morsy -- a former Muslim Brotherhood leader -- following a popular uprising in July 2013. Hundreds of Egyptian troops have since been slaughtered in this low-level insurgency. In the two months leading up to the October 24 massacre at Karm el-Kawadees, the group more than doubled its attacks in North Sinai -- killing 62 police officers and soldiers, according to Aswat Masriya, an Egyptian Reuters affiliate.
While looting weapons from Karm el-Kawadees, a militant proclaimed to the camera: "Tell the leader of ISIS, [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi, the leader of the faithful, that you are coming here and we are your soldiers."
The group has changed its logo and its name to Wilayat Sinai -- "the State of Sinai" -- positioning itself as part of the bigger ISIS "caliphate" that extends from northern Syria to central Iraq. Several other militant groups from the region have also pledged allegiance to ISIS, including in Libya, which shares a long porous border with Egypt that is known for being an arms-smuggling route.
These pledges benefit ISIS, whose territorial expansions have already peaked and are now stagnant, explains H. A. Hellyer, from the Center of Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution. "It may well be very possible that ABM decided that in order for it to maintain its own type of momentum, to become part of a broader transnational group, would be in its own interest," Hellyer told CNN.
Observers note the scarcity of verified information coming from Sinai; the military limits access to the wild terrain believed to be the group's home and the surrounding towns and villages.
Source: CNN
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