Egypt’s military said it was firmly in control of the Sinai peninsula after beating back the fiercest assault yet by Islamist militants behind a week of violence that has laid bare the growing threat facing the nation.
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A large crowd gathered for a street procession in Alexandria attended by the local governor.
Islamic State militants in North Sinai attacked several military checkpoints, and at least 70 people were killed.
Al-Abadi considered the Sinai terrorist attacks as a crime against all Muslims, expressing his country’s disposition to cooperate with Egypt in uprooting terrorism.
Sinai affairs specialist Mohannad Sabry warned that ISIL in Egypt and its affiliates were gaining strength.
“This is an unprecedented development that, not only Egypt, but the whole world should look at with the utmost care”, he added.
The strikes have continued into Thursday, state television reported, and the army has said they will remain ongoing until it has cleared the North Sinai region of all “terrorist elements”.
Earlier, security sources said militants had surrounded a police station in Sheikh Zuweid and planted bombs around it.
The source added that Wednesday’s attack, which saw suicide bombings carried out at different army checkpoints followed by militants surrounding the areas and cutting off supply and reinforcement lines, “exactly mirrored ISIS’s strategy in Syria and Iraq”.
The ministry said three members of the special forces team involved in the raid were wounded in the operation.
Troops regularly come under attack in the Sinai, where terrorists have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since Morsi s overthrow. According to an army spokesman, the fighters killed in the airstrikes took part in Wednesday’s combat which killed four officers.
Soldiers were demining roads in and around the area that had been booby trapped with mines and improvised explosive devices, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Meanwhile, a newspaper close to the Egyptian government said the Islamic State-linked militants who attacked the troops used sophisticated weaponry, including Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles.
Egyptian military and security officials have raised the casualty tolls from the coordinated militant attacks that struck the country’s restive northern Sinai on Wednesday morning.
Wednesday’s incident took place on the same day that the army was fighting an attack by ISIL militants in the Sinai and two days after Egypt’s public prosecutor was killed by a vehicle bomb in Cairo.
One of the dead was Nasr al-Hafi, a ex- deputy in the lower house of parliament for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, while the other was a Brotherhood leader, Abdel-Fattah Mohamed Ibrahim.
Egypt’s military has said it is “leading a vicious war against terrorism”.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, but analysts said it was possibly the work of one of the new Islamist militant groups that have framed their attacks as revenge for arrests and prosecutions by the government.
It remains unclear exactly how many people were killed in the attack. It said some of those killed had been convicted in court cases.
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Pounding his fist as he spoke Tuesday at the funeral of Hisham Barakat, who oversaw scores of cases against thousands of Islamists, el-Sissi signaled an even tougher campaign against Morsis Muslim Brotherhood and the possible execution of Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders who have received death sentences in recent months.
