Authorities in Egypt, have launched airstrikes on “terrorist outposts” and vehicles after attackers massacred more than 300 people in northern Sinai mosque, the military said Saturday.
More than 100 others were injured in the Friday assault on the al Rawdah Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed, believed to be the deadliest terror attack on the country’s soil.
“The Egyptian Air Force pursued the terrorist elements, discovered and destroyed a number of vehicles that carried out the brutal terrorist killings, and killed all terrorists inside those vehicles,” military spokesman Tamer Rifai said in a statement Saturday.
It also targeted a number of terrorist outposts containing weapons, ammunition and radical elements, Rifai said.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has vowed to respond to the massacre with “brute force.”
Al Rawdah mosque is known as the birthplace of an important Sufi cleric. Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam that some ultra-orthodox Muslims consider heretical.
No one has claimed responsibility, but Friday’s strike bears the hallmarks of an attack by ISIS.
The attack started when an explosive device went off in a building adjacent to the mosque, and gunmen fired at worshippers as they fled, witnesses told CNN.
They said gunmen then entered the mosque and fired at those inside.
The attackers had also set up “ambush” locations and opened fire on ambulances as they transported the wounded to al-Arish before the arrival of security services, according to witnesses.
Photos from inside the mosque showed what appeared to be bodies lined up in rows on the carpet.
