Cairo: Egypt’s top prosecutor has accused the suspects of involvement in attacks on churches and military targets. The militant group has increasingly targeted Christians after launching an armed insurgency in northern Sinai.
Egyptian authorities referred 48 suspected members of the “Islamic State” militant group to military trial for involvement in three deadly church bombings, Egypt’s chief prosecutor Nabil Sadeq said in a statement on Sunday.
At least 75 people have been killed in “Islamic State”-claimed attacks on Coptic churches in December and April, including two in Tanta and Alexandria on Palm Sunday. Sadeq said that 31 of the suspected militants are in custody, but 17 remain at large.
According to the prosecutor, the suspects allegedly set up “Islamic State” cells in Cairo and the southern province of Qena. The suspected militants allegedly received training in Syria and Libya.
In the statement, Sadeq also accused the suspects of participating in a separate attack on a checkpoint in Egypt’s Western Desert, which left eight law enforcement agents dead.
Egypt’s armed forces have struggled to quash an armed insurgency in northern Sinai since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi led a military coup against the country’s first democratically-elected leader, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2013.
