CAIRO: Dozens of Muslims, including religious and army leaders, packed an Egyptian mosque for Friday prayers a week after gunmen massacred more than 300 people in the house of worship.
The mosque in Rawda village in North Sinai had been cleaned and renovated following the massacre by suspected Daesh gunmen in time for the weekly Friday prayer.
The head of Egypt’s Second Field Army Khaled Mogawer, which is fighting Daesh in Sinai, could be seen in live footage aired on state television, sitting between the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb and the country’s Mufti Shawqi Allam.
The cleric who gave the prayer sermon tried to console the relatives of the victims, saying the dead were now in paradise, while condemning the attackers as the “brothers of devils.”
“God wanted to take martyrs from you. Why? Because God loves you,” said the preacher Abdel Fattal Al-Awari.
He recounted a saying by the Prophet Muhammad who, when asked whom God tests the most, responded: “The prophets, followed by the most exemplary.”
Worshippers could be seen spilling out of the mosque into its plaza. Al-Tayeb later gave a speech in which he described the attackers as “cowardly cancer.”
Daesh in Egypt has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers in attacks, and since last year more than 100 Christians in church bombings and shootings.
They had warned the mosque, which is associated with Sufis the militants call heretical, to stop holding mystical rites.
Witnesses and authorities had said the attackers were flying Daesh’s black banner, but the group has yet to claim the massacre decried even by its supporters. Analysts and officials say Daesh, responsible for atrocities around the world, may not claim responsibility following the backlash even from militants.
Worshippers pack Egyptian mosque week after massacre
Worshippers pack Egyptian mosque week after massacre
Libya’s security authorities free more than 200 migrants from ‘secret prison’, two security sources say
- Security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker
BENGHAZI: Libya’s security authorities have freed more than 200 migrants from what they described as a secret prison in the town of Kufra in the southeast of the country after they were held captive in inhuman conditions, two security sources from the city told Reuters on Sunday.
The security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker.
One of the sources said this person had not yet been detained.
“Some of the freed migrants were held captive up to two years in the underground cells,” this source said.
The other source said what the operation had found was “one of the most serious crimes against humanity that has been uncovered in the region.”
“The operation resulted in a raid on a secret prison within the city, where several inhumane underground detention cells were uncovered,” one of the sources added.
The freed migrants are from sub-Saharan Africa, mainly from Somalia and Eritrea, including women and children, the sources said. Kufra lies in eastern Libya, about 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the capital Tripoli.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
The oil-based Libyan economy is also a draw for impoverished migrants seeking work, but security throughout the sprawling country is poor, leaving migrants vulnerable to abuses.
At least 21 bodies of migrants were found in a mass grave in eastern Libya last week, with up to 10 survivors in the group bearing signs of having been tortured before they were freed from captivity, two security sources told Reuters.
Libya’s attorney general said in a statement on Friday the authorities in the east of the country had referred a defendant to the court for trial in connection with the mass grave on charges of “committing serious violations against migrants.”
In February last year, 39 bodies of migrants were recovered from about 55 mass graves in Kufra. The town houses tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled the conflict that erupted in Sudan in 2023.
