AFP

Cairo

A top jihadist has been killed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, security officials said yesterday, ahead of next week’s presidential election expected to sweep the ex-army chief to power on pledges to eradicate terrorism.

Shadi el-Menei, a senior commander of Egypt’s deadliest militant group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), was gunned down in an overnight ambush in his native Sinai Peninsula, the officials said.

Word of his death, not immediately confirmed by jihadist sources, came on the last official day of campaigning for Egypt’s presidential election, in which ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is expected to rout his sole rival, leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi.

There were conflicting accounts of who carried out the ambush.

Some officials said civilians from the Sinai’s heavily armed tribes killed Menei.

Others said local Bedouins tipped off security forces, who intercepted him and other militants as they prepared to bomb a gas pipeline.

Some Bedouin tribesmen have in recent months collaborated with security forces against militants.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has claimed some of the deadliest and highest profile attacks on security forces since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July.

They have included a bombing at Cairo police headquarters last December and an assassination attempt against the interior minister in September, as well as frequent attacks on security forces in the group’s Sinai base.

The US State Department designated the group a “foreign terrorist organisation” in April.

Before Mursi’s ouster, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis mainly targeted Israel, through attacks on the gas export pipeline through the Sinai to Israel. In January, its fighters fired a rocket at Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat.

Since Mursi’s ouster the group has escalated its operations, and the military-installed authorities say more than 500 people have died in the violence, mostly security personnel.

The group is thought to have been founded in 2011 following the Arab Spring uprising which ended president Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Its command structure and funding sources remain shadowy and analysts said Menei was just one of several leading figures within the group.

A founder, Tawfiq Mohamed Fareej, was killed in March when a car accident set off a bomb he was carrying.

The army has poured troops into the Sinai to tackle the militants, securing Israeli backing for the deployment in the sensitive peninsula, where troop numbers are restricted under the countries’ 1979 peace treaty.

“Vengeance is coming,” Ansar Beit al-Maqdis warned Sisi earlier this year, and the group launched twin suicide bombings outside the South Sinai provincial capital Al Tur on May 2 before the launch of the election campaign.

Sisi is running on a pledge to stamp out the violence and has promised if he wins there will be no place for the Brotherhood, whose top leaders are all in jail or exile.

But his opponents say if he becomes president, Egypt is likely to see a return to the autocratic rule of the Mubarak years.

Yesterday, prominent newspaper columnist Fahmy Howeidy, who strongly criticised Mursi’s ouster, was barred from leaving for Spain, officials at Cairo airport said.

Meanwhile, two people were killed in clashes between Mursi supporters and security forces yesterday, officials said.

One person was killed and 20 others were wounded in Cairo, the health ministry said.

It said another person was killed and three more were wounded as Mursi supporters and police clashed in Fayoum, a town southwest of the capital.

Mursi supporters also held brief protests in Cairo’s Nasr City, near the famed pyramids, in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and in the central province of Minya, security officials said.

Police fired tear gas in some areas to disperse the protests, held after weekly prayers.