Abstract

On 29 January 2015 the Islamic extremist group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis conducted a coordinated attack with suicide bombers, car bombs, mortar and small arms fire on a military base, a police station, a hotel, a newspaper office, several checkpoints and various other targets in northern Sinai. In total, 29 people were killed and 58 wounded. Unofficial sources reported even higher figures (74 wounded and 45 killed).
Egypt is the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood. The late Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri joined the organization in 1965. President Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by the Islamic extremist groups Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. Islamic extremism is not a new phenomenon in Egypt, but it seems to be on the rise again.

 

Colonel Wolfgang Pusztai is a Policy and Security analyst. He was the Austrian Defense Attaché from 2008 to 2012