A leader of an Islamist group blamed for a spate of deadly attacks in tourist resorts in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula over the past two years was killed in an explosion on Friday, a security source said.
Arafat Ouda Ali died as a device he tried to hurl at security forces closing in on his hideout on a Rafah farm, near the border with Gaza, exploded in his face, the source added.
Security forces, tipped off by Bedouin informants in the region, raided the farm early in the morning and a firefight broke out with the 28-year-old Egyptian man.
”He tried to throw the device at them, but it exploded in his face,” the source said.
Ali was wanted in connection with the triple suicide bombings in the Red Sea resort of Dahab on April 24 that killed 20 people, and a failed attack on peacekeepers of the Multinational Force and Observers in northern Sinai.
The security source said he was second-in-command of the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unification and Holy War) group, which the authorities blame for the string of attacks on Sinai’s tourist-packed Red Sea coast.
Multiple bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh killed about 70 people in July 2005, in the deadliest attack to have hit Egypt since a major wave of Islamist violence in the mid-1990s.
At least 34 people were also killed in bombings in and around the resort of Taba further up the Red Sea coast near the Israeli border in October 2004.
Since the latest bombings, security forces have been combing the vast mountainous desert of Sinai to track down the perpetrators.
The interior ministry announced earlier this month that the mastermind of the terror organisation behind the bombings, Nasser Khamis al-Mallahi, was killed.
Six others suspects and a police officer have also been killed since the government launched its manhunt in the Sinai. — Sapa-AFP