Egypt strikes Islamic State in Libya after video of mass beheadings

CAIRO (TNS) — Egypt bombarded Islamic State targets in Libya on Monday and urged coalition allies to do the same, hours after a gruesome video released online by the militant group purported to show the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians on a Mediterranean beach.

Training camps and weapons caches were among the targets, and all the aircraft returned safely to base, state television reported. President Abdel Fattah Sisi, the former military chief, had declared earlier that Egypt had the “right to respond” to the murder of its citizens.

Egypt swiftly called on the U.S.-led coalition confronting the Sunni Muslim militant group in Syria and Iraq to expand military actions to target its Libyan branch as well. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry urged strikes against “the terrorist Daesh organization,” referring to the group by its Arabic acronym.

The killings of the 21 Coptic Christians sent a wave of revulsion across Egypt, despite the Copts’ often disenfranchised status in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. Official statements cast the executions as an attack on all Egyptians, which would be dealt with as such. As a gesture of solidarity, Sisi visited a Coptic cathedral to offer condolences.

“Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield that will protect them all and a sword that amputates terrorism and extremism,” the Egyptian military command said in a statement, describing the airstrikes as “retribution.” Muslim clerics also were quick to condemn the killings, with Egypt’s Al Azhar, the seat of Sunni learning, describing the executions as “barbaric.”

Later, a senior Libyan air force officer told Egyptian television that the Egyptian strikes killed 40 to 50 militants, but the number could not be independently verified.

The executions, condemned by the Obama administration, appeared to signal a determination on the part of the Islamic State to expand its footprint beyond Iraq and Syria, the two countries where it has made its greatest military gains. Libya, which has collapsed into warring factions presided over by rival militias, offers fertile territory for the Sunni Muslim militant group, with enormous oil wealth at stake.

In the grim video, shot on a wintry beach, the prisoners were seen being marched into place by a line of black-clad, knife-wielding captors. At first, they kneel, the lips of some of the doomed men moving in apparent prayer. Then they were forced to lie face-down in the sand, and the executioners reached down and begin sawing away at their necks.