As in Manchester, Paris or Barcelona, families are devastated and a wider community left fearful – as its perpetrators desired. The escalation was not only in its scale and the ruthlessness of its organisation, but also in its target. It may be that the intensity of the backlash, including condemnation from militant groups in Egypt, has deterred the perpetrators from identifying themselves. As the rising toll of violence in northern Sinai shows, this is a crisis that has built over decades and accelerated in recent years. But relying on brute force is likely to take a further toll on innocent citizens in northern Sinai, and cannot protect them from the kind of attackers who struck the al-Radwa mosque.

Source: The Guardian November 26, 2017 19:52 UTC