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| Men in orange jumpsuits purported to be Egyptian Christians held captive by the ISIS are marched by armed men along a beach said to be near Tripoli, in this still image from an undated video made available on social media on February 15, 2015. (Reuters) |
Cairo: A terrorist group in Libya released a video on Sunday purportedly showing the beheading of 21 Egyptians, prompting Egypt’s president to threaten a “suitable” punishment for the killings.
President Abdel Fatah Al Sisi said his country reserved the right to “punish these murderers” as he called a meeting of security chiefs and declared seven days of mourning after the video was distributed by terrorists on social media.
The footage shows 21 handcuffed hostages wearing orange jumpsuits being beheaded by their black-suited captors on a beach the group said was in the Libyan province of Tripoli.
The group had said the same number of Egyptian hostages were being held in Libya.
Egyptian state television broadcast some of the footage from the terrorist’s video without showing the beheadings but depicting the hostages marched along by their captors on a beach.
“Egypt reserves the right to respond in a suitable way and time to punish these murderers,” a visibly angry Sisi said in a televised speech.
The security body that is meeting in Cairo includes Sisi, his defence and interior ministers and military commanders.
French President Francois Hollande, whose government is poised to sign a deal selling Egypt advanced Rafale fighter jets on Monday, expressed his “concern at the expansion of Daesh in Libya”.
The group has been hammered by US-led air strikes in Iraq and Syria after it took over swathes of the two countries, and has active affiliates in Egypt and Libya.
Libya’s embattled parliament, which is locked in a conflict with the terrorist militias, expressed its condolences in a statement and called on the world to “show solidarity with Libya” against militants.
The UN’s mission in Libya called for the group’s actions to be “rejected and denounced by all Libyans”.
The latest video by the terrorists comes just days after a group of extremists released footage showing the gruesome burning alive of a Jordanian pilot the group captured after his F-16 came down in Syria in December.
Video purports to show militants beheading hostages
Cairo: A video purporting to show the mass beheading of hostages was released on Sunday by militants in Libya affiliated with a terrorist group.
The militants had been holding 21 Egyptians hostage for weeks, all laborers rounded up from the city of Sirte in December and January. It was not clear from the video whether all 21 hostages were killed. It was one of the first such beheading videos from a militant group affiliate to come from outside the group’s core territory in Syria and Iraq.
The Associated Press could not immediately independently verify the video. But the Egyptian government both declared it authentic.
The Egyptian government declared a seven-day mourning period and President Abdel Fatah Al Sisi addressed the nation late on Sunday night, pledging resilience in the fight against terrorism.
“These cowardly actions will not undermine our determination” said Al Sisi, who also banned all travel to Libya by Egyptian citizens and said his government reserves the right to seek retaliation. “Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals.”
The video’s makers had identified themselves. A still photo, apparently taken from the video, was published last week.
The video, released on Sunday night, depicts several men in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. The men are made to kneel and one militant, dressed differently that the others, addresses the camera.
The men are then laid face-down and simultaneously beheaded.
In El Aour, a dusty and impoverished village some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Cairo and home to 13 of the hostages, friends and family assumed the worst as soon as the photo was published on Thursday.
On Saturday, two days after the photo appeared, the community was wrapped in sorrow. Men covered their heads with dirt in a sign of both grief and shame. Women slapped their own faces or let out heart-wrenching shrieks of pain.
Villagers accused the Egyptian government of doing little to help the captives. The authorities, they say, were able to free Muslim Egyptians abducted in Libya in recent months but have done nothing to save the 21 because they are Christian — an accusation rooted in the deep sense of religious discrimination felt by most Egyptian Copts.
Samuel Walham’s family immediately recognized him from the picture, showing him kneeling on the beach alongside four other hostages — each flanked by a knife-wielding militant.
“Look at my love. Look how beautiful he is,” Walham’s mother, Ibtassal Lami, said through tears as she cradled a photo of her son and women wailed in the family’s ramshackle, two-story home. “He only went there to earn his living.”
Walham secured his visa in late 2013. He arrived months before militias seized the capital Tripoli in August 2014. He found work as a plumber in the coastal city of Sirte, which was largely destroyed during the war and was the hometown of ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
It was there that Walham was kidnapped on Dec. 28. Six days later, gunmen seized another 13 Egyptian Christians from Sirte in a targeted raid on a housing compound for laborers.
Abanoub Ishaq, a 19-year-old worker from El Aour, was there the night the militants burst in just before dawn, knocking on doors with a list of names. Those who answered were hauled away, Ishaq said.
“We heard nothing but my friends’ screams, then they were silenced,” he told The Associated Press.
AP
Source : Khaleej Times
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