CAIRO: The gunmen who massacred more than 300 worshippers in an Egyptian mosque made no effort to conceal their identity — they showed up raising the black banner of Daesh, authorities and witnesses said.
The group’s militants had previously warned the North Sinai mosque associated with Sufis to end the mystical practices Daesh calls heretical, even visiting the mosque in person a few weeks before the attack, a Sufi sheikh said.
But almost a week after the Friday massacre, Daesh has yet to claim the attack in a sign, officials and analysts say, that their gunmen might have gone too far even by the extremists’ standards.
For all the indiscriminate carnage Daesh has perpetrated on almost every continent, never before has an attack shocked even its supporters who now insist the group is innocent.
As the scale of the attack percolated in militant social media channels, pro-Daesh users denied the group’s involvement.
Every militant group known to operate in Egypt, including the Al-Qaeda-linked Jund Al-Islam in Sinai that opposes Daesh, condemned the massacre.
Daesh supporters on social media were livid when a purported audio recording of wireless communications between a Daesh member boasting about the attack, and another noting down details, spread on pro-Al-Qaeda Telegram channels.
Daesh had targeted mosques before. The militants bombed a Manchester concert on May 22 in which they were certain to kill children who had come to watch pop star Ariana Grande perform.
At the time, British extremist Omar Hussein — who may have been killed in the takeover of the group’s erstwhile capital of Raqqa in Syria — told AFP killing “disbeliever” children rested comfortably on his conscience.
“As for the killing of little girls then it is permissible 2 kill the kuffaar as they kill us,” he wrote in response to an AFP query.
At least 27 children died in the massacre.
“Something of this scale, that killed more than ‘just Sufis’ would be hard to justify,” said analyst Amarnath Amarasingam, senior research fellow with counter terrorism group ISD Global.
“It could be that the Egyptian or Sinai context makes this kind of attack more abhorrent and makes the group less likely to earn local support,” said a western official.
After the attack, another militant who regularly defends Daesh atrocities flatly denied Daesh involvement.
“Not at all. Your analysis is wrong. You’ve been influenced by media reports,” he wrote in a message responding to an AFP query.
Daesh in Egypt, based in the north of the Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip, has killed hundreds of security personnel in attacks, and more than a hundred Christians in church bombings and shootings over the past year.
“It does appear to be in line with a gradual shift over the last four years,” said another Western official.
Daesh went “from a violent campaign by the terrorists in Sinai that was very local... and in the beginning careful not to alienate the local population... to something that seems to be much more affected by global jihadi motivations of Daesh,” the official said.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has warned that Daesh foreign fighters will try to settle in his region as they lose ground in Iraq and Syria.
But it may have been a local initiative by the increasingly pressed militants in Sinai that was badly received by Daesh’s leadership in Iraq and Syria, a third western official said.
It is “possible that the attack was coordinated without central agreement. Hence the absence of a claim,” said the diplomat.
Another possibility is that it was an attack meant to send a message to Sufis and villagers seen as pro-government, without granting it the imprimatur of an official Daesh claim.
The western officials agreed to speak to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Hassan Hassan, a leading expert on Daesh, said the militants had called the Sufis “taghuts” in a publication, a word used in the Qur’an to describe the devil and tyrants.
“Nothing is off limits when they call them taghut,” said Hassan, a senior fellow at the TIMEP think tank and author of the book “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.”
Daesh fighters, however, had gone too far in the past and been punished for it, he said.
“When they killed the Al-Shaitat, they removed the (attackers) after that,” he said of a 2014 massacre of up to 700 tribesmen in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor region.
“Either because they wanted to distance themselves from it or they thought they went too far,” Hassan said.
Still, with Daesh’s media operation continuing to baffle observers, it remains possible but unlikely that the group may yet claim the attack.
After an attack on a military toll booth south of Cairo in June, Daesh issued a claim three weeks later — not through the usual statement on its Telegram accounts but in its weekly Nabaa newsletter.
Daesh silent on Egypt massacre decried even by supporters
Daesh silent on Egypt massacre decried even by supporters
What 2026 holds for Sudan as conflict drags on and famine deepens
- Hopes after Khartoum’s recapture dimmed as El-Fasher fell to RSF atrocities and ceasefire efforts stalled
- Armed factions consolidated control over different regions, splitting the country and prolonging the fighting
LONDON: When the Sudanese Armed Forces recaptured Khartoum from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in late March, soldiers and many of the capital’s remaining residents took to the streets to celebrate.
The RSF, which seized the city soon after the civil war erupted in April 2023, had ruled with an iron fist. When its fighters were finally dislodged, much of the population was glad to see the back of them.
There was even hope that the army’s victory could mark a turning point in the conflict, setting in train a series of events that would lead to an end to the fighting. Such optimism, however, looked misplaced as the rest of the world welcomed 2026.
Seven months after the SAF had reclaimed Khartoum, RSF fighters unleashed a fresh wave of violence against the population of another city, El-Fasher, 800 kilometers away on the other side of the country.
The RSF’s capture of North Darfur’s capital and the days of bloodletting that followed marked one of the darkest chapters in Sudan’s history.
Fighters carried out mass executions, torture and rapes reminiscent of the 2003-05 genocide inflicted on Darfur by the Janjaweed — the predecessor of the RSF.
Far from being the year when Sudan’s fortunes began to turn, 2025 will likely be remembered as the year when the vast nation, already bifurcated by the independence of South Sudan in 2011, was split once more, this time between a SAF-controlled east and a RSF-dominated west.
The International Crisis Group recently warned that the war “could settle into a prolonged stalemate that will morph into a durable partition.”
“Neighboring countries fear that such a failed-state scenario would spell even more long-term instability that spills beyond Sudan’s borders,” the think-tank added.
El-Fasher was the SAF’s last holdout in Darfur. Its strategic significance was reflected in the RSF’s brutal 18-month siege to break the city.
When the group finally succeeded on Oct. 26, it consolidated its hold over Darfur and cemented the dividing line running through the middle of Sudan.
The RSF now controls most of western Sudan and large areas of the Kordofan region.
The SAF, meanwhile, controls the central areas around Khartoum, the north and the east, including Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.
Kordofan, a vast agricultural area made up of three states and home to the nation’s oil fields, has now become the focus of the fighting.
The violence there has escalated in recent weeks, with hundreds of civilians killed since late October, according to the UN.
On Dec. 4, a children’s nursery and a hospital in Kalogi were hit by a drone strike, killing 114 people including 63 children.
Another drone strike on Dec. 13 killed six Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers, who had been deployed to South Kordofan to oversee disputed territory between Sudan and South Sudan.
Sudan’s largest oil field, Heglig, which is located near the border and supplies both countries, has now fallen to the RSF.
Kordofan is also strategically significant because it spans the supply lines to the west of the country.
With the world’s gaze distracted by Gaza and Ukraine, Sudan’s humanitarian crisis continued to spiral in 2025.
UN agencies say the conflict is now the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and largest displacement crisis, while the International Rescue Committee describes it as the largest humanitarian crisis ever recorded.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, more than 12 million displaced, and 30 million — two thirds of the population — are in need of aid. Half the population faces acute hunger. Areas of Darfur and Kordofan are already in the grip of famine.
“We’re really looking at the most devastating war in Sudan’s history,” Ahmed Soliman, senior research fellow at Chatham House, said in a recent podcast. “It’s shocking and globally the worst humanitarian crisis without a doubt.”
Speaking shortly after the fall of El-Fasher, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the conflict was “spiraling out of control.”
But the conflict had spiraled long before the horror of the RSF’s onslaught. El-Fasher just represented a sickening nadir.
About 260,000 people were trapped in El-Fasher when it was finally overrun. The RSF had recently completed an earth barrier encircling the city to block people from leaving.
The group’s fighters videoed themselves gunning down residents both in the city and as they tried to flee.
In one incident, more than 460 men, women and children at the Saudi Maternity Hospital were massacred.
Satellite images analyzed by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab showed pools of blood on the ground and piles of bodies in the hospital car park.
Victims and witnesses recounted sickening acts of brutality and sexual violence.
One woman told Amnesty International that she had tried to flee the Abu Shouk neighborhood with her five children and a group of neighbors but were stopped by RSF fighters.
Both she and her 14-year-old daughter were raped. Her daughter died a few days later after reaching a clinic outside the city.
A 34-year-old man told the human rights monitor that he was among a group of 20 men who had managed to cross the earth berm but were caught by RSF fighters.
They were forced to lie down before the gunmen opened fire, killing 17 of them.
“The RSF were killing people as if they were flies,” he said. “It was a massacre. None of the people killed that I have seen were armed soldiers.”
The International Criminal Court said last month it was taking immediate steps to preserve and collect evidence related to the El-Fasher atrocities for use in future prosecutions.
Even before El-Fasher, the RSF had been widely accused of carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity, with the US government determining that the group had committed acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The shocking images that emerged from El-Fasher have given new impetus to international efforts to try to end the conflict.
The war stems from the aftermath of the downfall of President Omar Bashir amid mass protests against his rule.
After the civilian aspect of a power sharing agreement was shut out of the transitional process in 2021, a power struggle emerged between SAF commander Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF chief Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The rivalry eventually led to the outbreak of war in April 2023.
Since El-Fasher fell, the “Quad” group of mediators of Saudi Arabia, the US, Egypt and the UAE have intensified efforts to secure a ceasefire and a peace settlement.
During his visit to Washington last month, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman encouraged US President Donald Trump to help bring the conflict to an end.
The RSF has said it would agree to the Quad’s roadmap, which includes an initial three-month humanitarian truce leading to a permanent ceasefire and transition to civilian rule.
On Dec. 16, Al-Burhan declared he was ready to work with the Trump administration to resolve the conflict.
For those suffering in Sudan’s conflict zones, it is a faint glimmer of hope after a year of unfathomable suffering.
Whether 2026 will see a change in the fortunes of Sudanese, only time will tell.
