Suicide Bombing Shakes Sinai Amid Security Crackdown

North Sinai — As hundreds of people jammed the weekly Tuesday market in the middle of volatile Sheikh Zuwayed, several men armed with high-caliber machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades took up positions in houses with strategic views of the town's infamous police compound. They then proceeded to barrage the heavily guarded building with rockets and bullets, setting their crosshairs on Egyptian security personnel ducking behind sandbags on the rooftop.

As the security forces exchanged fire with the attackers on the town's main boulevard, a vehicle loaded with explosives raced across the main square and into the massive, steel front gate of the compound. A deafening explosion destroyed the gate, an armored vehicle stationed behind it and parts of the compound wall. The widows of dozens of neighboring houses shattered, and the fronts of some 30 shops lining the opposite side of the street were destroyed along with part of the mosque beside the compound. Miraculously, only four bystanders were injured. 

“The explosion shook our house, a few hundred yards away from the police station. It was frightening,” Ali Mohamed, a resident of Sheikh Zuwayed told Al-Monitor. “Now we are afraid to even walk around, and we never step foot on the main road.”

The Aug. 27 attack was the first suicide mission to target a security facility in Egypt's most volatile region, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip. It is the latest, however, in a string of deadly assaults targeting military and security personnel in north Sinai since Egyptian Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi on July 3.