Egypt’s deadliest militant group has vowed fresh deadly attacks against security forces next week during the country’s major Muslim feast.
In a video released online, Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, threatened killings against the police would take place Saturday, the first day of the Eid Al-Adha feast, saying it “will be a black day on the infidel interior minister and his associates.”
The video showed a map of Egypt with graphic bombs exploding, along with the group’s black flag logo.
Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (Supporters of Jerusalem) has orchestrated some of the worst militant attacks against police and army forces since the army-backed ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, including a failed assassination attempt on Egypt’s interior minister in Cairo last year.
Earlier in September, the group claimed the killing of six policemen by a roadside bomb in the Sinai Peninsula, where the army is fighting an Islamist insurgency.
The Sinai-based group said its attacks are to avenge a state crackdown against Islamists after Morsi’s removal that saw hundreds killed and thousands jailed.
In August, the group claimed the beheading of four men accused of providing Israel with intelligence for an airstrike that killed three of its fighters.
The attack later prompted the Islamic State, a militant Sunni group that seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq, and which Egyptian officials say has ties with Sinai militants, to urge Egypt’s militants to press ahead with attacks against security forces, including decapitations.