IS militants kill 18 policemen in Egypt's restive North Sinai

Islamic State jihadists ambushed a police convoy, killing 18 officers and wounding seven others in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Monday.

Islamic State terrorists detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) targeting armoured vehicles of a security patrol in Arish city in North Sinai that later devolved into a gunfight between the security forces and the terrorist elements, local media reported on Monday.

Four armoured vehicles were destroyed due to roadside bombs and a fifth one carrying signal jamming equipment.

ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack in a brief statement carried by its Aamaq website.

Meanwhile, local media reported that a number of terrorists were killed in fire exchange after the blast.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terror activities that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

A day earlier, nine suspected terrorists were killed in a shootout in Egypt's third largest city Giza, home to the legendary Great Pyramids and the Sphinx.

The police cordoned off several streets in the area and launched the counter-terrorism operation. The security forces broke into an apartment in one of the neighborhood's residence buildings, where the suspects were hiding.
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Islamic State is on its knees, but its legacy will long haunt Middle East

After three years of violence, Islamic State has encountered a major defeat that could mean that its end is near. On July 10 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, after a successful nine-month military offensive to “liberate” the northern city of Mosul, declared “total victory” over IS in Iraq.

He categorically said: “I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of falsehood and terrorism which the terrorist Daesh announced from Mosul”, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS or ISIL.

Almost exactly three years ago, on June 29 2014, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the group’s self-styled caliph, proclaimed a cross-border caliphate stretching over vast swathes of northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria.


Today, the Iraqi half of that territory has been almost totally eliminated (the northwestern Iraqi city of Tel Afar, close to the Syrian border, being an exception) while the Syrian half, based in the city of Raqqa, is facing imminent collapse under powerful US-backed Kurdish-led military offensives.

It’s a major turning point.

In the summer of 2014, an ISIL blitzkrieg swiftly defeated Iraqi defence forces across northwestern Iraq, capturing some 40% of Iraqi territories.

Prior to this rapid conquest, ISIL fighters had captured the Syrian province of Raqqa in January 2014, taking advantage of the bloody civil war let loose by pro-democracy movements.
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