Cairo: The decapitated body of a man was found on Friday in a town in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, security officials said, the latest in a series of beheadings allegedly carried out by Islamist militants.
Local residents found the body on the side of a road in Shaikh Zuweid, near North Sinai’s provincial capital of Al Arish.
Friday’s gruesome find comes after Egypt’s deadliest Islamist militant group, Ansar Bait Al Maqdis, claimed it beheaded four Sinai residents in August.
The men were accused of being “Israeli informants” who helped target and kill some of the group’s members.
Egypt’s military has been carrying out a vast offensive against Islamist groups in the north of Sinai since militants stepped up attacks following the army’s ouster of Islamist president Mohammad Mursi in July 2013.
Sinai has turned into a hotbed for extremist militants who have killed scores of security personnel since Mursi’s ouster.
Ansar Bait Al Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), initially used to launch rocket attacks against the Israeli regime, but since Mursi’s ouster it has claimed deadly attacks in the Sinai, the Nile Delta and in Cairo.
The group says its attacks are in retaliation for the brutal government crackdown against pro-Mursi Islamists that has left at least 1,400 dead and about 15,000 jailed.
