{Abu Duaa al-Ansari and 45 other ISIL fighters killed in operation guided by “accurate intelligence”, military says.}<\/p>\n
The leader of the Sinai branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS) has been killed in a series of air strikes south of the peninsula’s el-Arish town, Egypt’s military has said.<\/p>\n
Abu Duaa al-Ansari was killed together with 45 other ISIL fighters in an operation guided by “accurate intelligence”, Brigadier-General Mohammed Samir, the military’s chief spokesman, said on his Facebook page.<\/p>\n
He also claimed that the army destroyed arms and ammunition stores used by the group, but did not say when the operation took place.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate confirmation from Sinai Province, ISIL’s offshoot in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.<\/p>\n
Egyptian forces have been battling the group for years but the violence has grown deadlier since the 2013 overthrow by the military of President Mohamed Morsi.<\/p>\n
The campaign has killed hundreds of soldiers and police and has also targeted Western interests within the country.<\/p>\n
ISIL controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and has a presence in Libya, which borders Egypt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Abu Duaa al-Ansari and 45 other ISIL fighters killed in operation guided by “accurate intelligence”, military says.} The leader of the Sinai branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS) has been killed in a series of air strikes south of the peninsula’s el-Arish town, Egypt’s military […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27467"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27467"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}