ISIS has a new residency in Egypt, according to a YouTube message posted Sunday.
In the audio message,
the Sinai-based militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or ABM, allegedly
announces its allegiance to ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State.
Iraq claims key city recaptured from ISIS
The roughly 10-minute
clip blames tyrants and their "Jewish agents and their allies" for
decades of Muslim suffering. The message also calls ISIS "the emergence
of a new dawn."
If verified, this would
be a new, dangerous chapter for the deadliest group in Egypt. Since
2012, ABM's attacks have grown more daring and sophisticated. The group
has killed hundreds of Egyptian police officers and soldiers. The
largest attack was last month in the Sinai Peninsula, killing at least
31 soldiers. Analysts put the group's numbers at from the hundreds to
roughly a thousand.
Photos: The ISIS terror threat
While ABM's attacks,
until now, have almost exclusively targeted the Egyptian government,
there is growing fear that an association with ISIS could expand the
threat to civilian and tourist sites.
Egyptian security forces have been aggressively battling ABM since the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsy in 2013.
Numerous checkpoints dot
northern Sinai to prevent the movement of weapons and fighters. The
threat to security forces operating in this area is so severe that at
times, a shoot-on-sight curfew goes into effect between Arish, the
largest city in northern Sinai, and the Rafah border crossing with Gaza,
according to security officials. After October's attack, the government
authorized a three-month curfew for the northern part of the peninsula.
Officials in Egypt blame
Hamas in Gaza for aiding the militant group, an accusation Hamas denies.
Recently, the government relocated more than a thousand families away
from the border in a move to eliminate cover for any tunnels between
Egypt and Gaza and to create a buffer zone. AMB initially gained a
foothold by exploiting the long-entrenched mistrust between local
Bedouins and Egyptian authorities.
The state of fear created
by ABM eventually started to alienate many of northern Sinai's
residents. ABM lost support after assassinating Bedouin leaders who
disagreed with their practices and beheading men accused of being
informants.
ISIS or al Qaeda
Before ISIS' rise to
power, ABM was often associated with al Qaeda. Similar messages on
social media proclaimed the group's allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman
al-Zawahiri, only later to be denied by the militant group.
In an article in Atlantic Council by Zack Gold,
he said there "appears to be an internal tussle in ABM over support for
these international organizations." He also argued that if the militant
group associates itself with ISIS or al Qaeda then it would lose its
status as a "local hero" and become a "foreign agent."
Association with ISIS
could also further damage ABM's image with most Egyptians. Egypt relies
heavily on tourism and any organization that threatens this source of
income risks loss of support.
Egyptian State website Ahram Online published an article that reported ABM denied any allegiance to ISIS.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the department will assess the issue.
CNN has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the audio message. SURCE>> CNN