Egypt mosque attack: At least 235 killed as militants shoot at fleeing worshippers after detonating bomb

The attack began with a powerful explosion at the al-Rawdah mosque and gunmen leapt out of four off-road vehicles to kill people as they fled. Security officials and witnesses said the attackers used their vehicles to cut off escape routes and opened fire on ambulances as they reached the scene. More than 100 were wounded.
The gunmen appear to have escaped from the scene after the massacre before Egyptian security forces could arrive.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but suspicion fell on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (Isil) affiliate in the Sinai desert, which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Egyptian military and the country’s Christian minority.

The worshippers at the al-Rawdah were mainly Sufis, who adhere to a mystic form of Islam. Isil considers Sufis to be heretics and has threatened them in the past.

The town of Bir al-Abed is home to around 2,500 people, all members of the Sawarka tribe. In conservative rural areas of Egypt it is usually only men who attend Friday prayers. With an attack so large it is believed that a significant portion of all the men in the village were either killed or wounded on Friday.

Abdel Qader Mubarak, a man originally from the village, said his entire family had been killed in the slaughter. "I can't talk, all my family are gone," he told The Telegraph.

The massacre is the worst terrorist attack on civilians in modern Egyptian history, and its death toll outstripped the 224 deaths caused when suspected Isil militants blew up a Russian airliner shortly after it took off from Sharm el-Sheikh in 2015.

Donald Trump led a chorus of international condemnation of the attack. “Horrible and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent and defenseless worshipers in Egypt,” he said on Twitter. “The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!”

Source http://telegraph.co.uk