A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis roughly 40km (25 miles) west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish before gunmen opened fire on those gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.
Witnesses said the assailants surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles and then planted a bomb outside.
The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they tried to flee and used the congregants’ vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.
The state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that 235 people were killed and 109 wounded in the attack, the scale of which is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by Islamist extremist groups.
The Gaza Strip’s border crossing with Egypt that had been due to reopen today will remain closed until further notice because of the attack, a Palestinian official said.