CAIRO: Egypt's military said on Saturday that it had carried out air strikes and raids overnight against the militants it held responsible for killing more than 300 worshippers at a mosque in North Sinai.
The bloodiest attack in Egypt's modern history, in which militants gunned down worshippers fleeing explosions, brought condemnation from world leaders, while President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning in the shocked nation.
The death toll in the devastating attack was revised upward on Saturday to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 more people were wounded, the state news agency MENA said.
No group has claimed responsibility, but Egyptian forces are battling a stubborn Islamic State affiliate in the region, one of the surviving branches of the militant group after it suffered defeats by US-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.
However, the public prosecutor's office on Saturday said that the gunmen, who numbered between 25 and 30, were carrying an Islamic State flag.
"The air force has over the past few hours eliminated a number of outposts used by terrorist elements," the army said on Saturday.
Egyptian warplanes were in action on Saturday over Sinai, according to the military, reportedly targeting several vehicles in which some of the perpetrators of the attack were travelling. All passengers in the vehicles were killed, the army said. It was impossible to independently verify the claim since the media is virtually banned from working in Sinai.
Witnesses say gunmen set off a bomb at the end of Friday prayers at the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El-Arish city, and then opened fire as worshippers tried to flee, shooting at ambulances and setting fire to cars to block roads.
Images on state media showed bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the mosque.
Witnesses speaking to The Associated Press in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia where some of the wounded were taken spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshippers.
They spoke of some jumping out of windows, a stampede in a corridor leading to the washrooms and of children screaming in horror. Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.
Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he settled in Bir al-Abd, the small town where the attack took place, three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai. He suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs.
"Everyone lay down on the floor and kept their heads down. If you raised your head you got shot," he said. "The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate: Whoever they weren't sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead."
Striking a mosque would be a shift in tactics for the Sinai militants, who have previously attacked troops and police and more recently tried to spread their insurgency to the mainland by hitting Christian churches and pilgrims.
The massive casualties in the Sinai attack and the targeting of a mosque stunned Egyptians who have struggled through instability after the 2011 uprising ousted longstanding leader Hosni Mubarak, and the years of protests that followed.
"May the souls of all those who die rest in peace, Muslims and Christians alike ... these people have no religion," said Abdullah an unemployed man in downtown Cairo referring to the attackers. "Every other day someone dies, every other day a church is bombed ... where is the security?"
Local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as Islamic State consider targets because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry. Islamic State has targeted Sufi and Shia Muslims in other countries like Iraq.
The jihadists in Egypt's Sinai have also attacked local tribes and their militias for working with the army and police.
Sisi, a former armed forces commander who supporters see as a bulwark against Islamist militants, promised the "utmost force" against those responsible for Friday's attack. Security has been a key reason for his supporters to back him, and he is expected to run for re-election next year.
"What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism," he said on Friday.
North Sinai, a mostly desert area that stretches from the Suez Canal eastward to the Gaza Strip and Israel, has long been a security headache for Egypt and is a strategic region for Cairo because of its sensitive borders.
The local militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, once allied to al- Qaeda, split from it and declared allegiance to Islamic State in 2014. But attacks in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood after mass protests against his rule.