The Egyptian army announced on Sunday that 15 of its members were killed or injured in operations carried out recently on the Sinai peninsula, and that 126 of those described as militants were killed, while human rights organizations accuse the Egyptian regime of carrying out extrajudicial executions.
"As a result of the valiant hostilities of our armed forces in the areas of operations, four officers, three non-commissioned officers, and eight soldiers were awarded the honor of martyrdom and purification of terrorist outposts," the army general command said in a statement.
The statement also stated that "22 raids and 16 specific operations were carried out, resulting in the death of 126 takfiri individuals." The army publishes the developments of its operations in the Sinai every few months without announcing a specific time frame.
The latest statement came three days after the army announced that ten of its members had been killed and wounded in an attack near the city of Bir al-Abed in North Sinai. The ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
And sources told the island that gunmen targeted a military vehicle in the Al-Wefaq area southwest of Rafah in Sinai.
Human rights organizations accuse Cairo of carrying out extrajudicial executions, forced evictions and collective punishment as part of the campaign. The army denies the charges and says it takes into account the lives of civilians during its operations.
In February 2018, Egyptian forces, from the army and the police, launched a massive campaign against armed and "extremist" armed groups across the country, especially those stationed in North Sinai.
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Human rights charges
Between July 2013 and July 2018, the Arab Organization for Human Rights documented the killing of 4,010 civilians in Sinai, including 3709 who the army said they had been killed as a result of security confrontations, the rest were killed randomly, and without opening an investigation into any incident.
About a year ago, Human Rights Watch said that North Sinai military and police forces committed serious and widespread violations of civilians in the context of the war against ISIS. It also accused "extremist militants" of "horrific crimes" there.
The human rights organization said that some of those violations - which I documented in a two-year investigation entitled "If you are afraid for your life, leave Sinai" - amount to a war crime.
The Watch report accused the security forces of making arbitrary arrests, including juvenile youths, of disappearances, of torture and extrajudicial killings, as well as of collective punishment, forced evictions, and air and ground attacks against civilians.
In April 2019, an analysis by Reuters of the Egyptian Ministry of Interior data on the media or published by the official Middle East News Agency - the period from July 1, 2015 to the end of 2018 - showed that only six of the 471 suspects remained alive. A man in 108 incidents, meaning that the death toll in it was 98.7%.
The Reuters report added that the similarity was surprising between the Interior Ministry’s statements, and every time the Ministry said that its forces had approached or raided the terrorist or criminals ’hideout by“ taking all necessary legal measures ”and the statements said that the terrorists or criminals opened fire and then the security forces responded.