As Sinai Clean-Up Deadline Approaches, Militant Deaths Mount

by Dramelin 2:30 AM 0 comments

Egypt’s military said it killed almost 30 militants in Sinai over the past few days, in a last-minute burst to rout terrorists from the restive peninsula as a presidential deadline to pacify the area approached.
Security forces killed 12 militants in a firefight, the military spokesman said on his official Facebook page early Monday, after killing 16 others a day earlier in the rugged territory that’s become the base for the Islamic State’s local affiliate in Egypt.
The offensive, announced on Friday, comes ahead of next month’s president elections, in which President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is expected to easily secure a second term.
About 100 other suspected militants have been arrested and weapons caches destroyed, the army said.
Thinking of Another Arab Spring? Forget It, Egypt’s El-Sisi Says El-Sisi has been struggling to contain a militant threat despite a crackdown on Islamists that began even before his election in 2014.
In November, he gave his new armed forces chief of staff three months to restore security after an attack on a north Sinai mosque that left more than 300 dead.
El-Sisi, a former army chief and defense minister, relied heavily on his security credentials to win his first election.
The vote scheduled for late March has been criticized by detractors as little more than a rubber stamp after his most viable challengers were either disqualified from the race or withdrew.
El-Sisi’s sole rival -- a little-known lawmaker who supportedthe president’s re-election bid -- is seen by critics as a fig leaf meant to provide a veneer of democracy to the process.