Terrorism in Egypt in the 20th and 21st centuries has targeted the Egyptian government officials, Egyptian police and Egyptian army members, tourists, Sufi Mosques and the Christian minority. Many attacks have been linked to Islamic extremism, and terrorism increased in the 1990s when the Islamist movement al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya targeted high-level political leaders and killed hundreds – including civilians – in its pursuit of implementing traditional Sharia law in Egypt.
An Islamist insurgency is taking place in the Maghreb region of North Africa, followed on from the end of the Algerian Civil War in 2002. The Algerian militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) allied itself with al-Qaeda to eventually become al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Algerian and other Maghreb governments fighting the militants have worked with the United States and the United Kingdom since 2007, when Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara began.
The August 2012 Sinai attack occurred on 5 August 2012, when armed men ambushed an Egyptian military base in the Sinai Peninsula, killing 16 soldiers and stealing two armored cars, which they used to infiltrate into Israel. The attackers broke through the Kerem Shalom border crossing to Israel, where one of the vehicles exploded. They then engaged in a firefight with soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), during which six of the attackers were killed. No Israelis were injured.
The Sinai insurgency was an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, launched by Islamist militants against Egyptian security forces, which have also included attacks on civilians. The insurgency began during the Egyptian Crisis, during which the longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
Operation Sinai is an ongoing Egyptian military campaign, launched in early August 2012, against Islamic militants within the Sinai Peninsula to crush the Sinai Insurgency. The operation came as a direct response to the 2012 Egyptian-Israeli border attack on 5 August 2012. The operation was initially reported as part of "Operation Nisr", but on 3 September 2012, the Egyptian army issued a statement requesting media sources to use the official name "Operation Sinai."
Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, or Ansar Al-Quds, was a jihadist, extremist terrorist group based in Sinai from 2011-14.
On 16 July 2014, militants from the Uqba Ibn Nafi Battalion attacked two checkpoints in the Chaambi Mountains killing fourteen Tunisian soldiers and injuring twenty-five. The 2014 Chaambi Mountains attack is the deadliest militant skirmish involving the Tunisian Armed Forces since their independence in 1956.
On 24 October 2014, ISIL militants launched two attacks on Egyptian army positions in the Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 33 security personnel. This was one of the deadliest assaults on the Egyptian military in decades.
On 29 January 2015, militants from the ISIL-affiliated Wilayat Sinai militant group launched a series of attacks on army and police bases in Arish using car bombs and mortars. The attacks, which occurred in more than six different locations, resulted in 44 deaths.
On 18 March 2015, two militants attacked the Bardo National Museum in the Tunisian capital city of Tunis, and took hostages. Twenty-one people, mostly European tourists, were killed at the scene, and an additional victim died ten days later. Around fifty others were injured. The two gunmen, Tunisian citizens Yassine Labidi and Saber Khachnaoui, were killed by police. Police treated the event as a terrorist attack.
The following is a chronological timeline of fatal incidents during the ongoing Sinai insurgency, which was invigorated by a period of relative instability and political turmoil in Egypt, beginning with the 2011 uprising against former autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Insurgent attacks, however, intensified significantly following the July 2013 coup that ousted Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Morsi and subsequent crackdown on his supporters.
In July 2013, at the same time as mass protests began against the 3 July coup d'état which deposed Mohamed Morsi, and in parallel with the escalation of the already ongoing jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, pro-Muslim Brotherhood militants started violent attacks against policemen and soldiers in central and western Egypt. In the following months, new Islamist armed groups were created to reinstate Islamist rule in Egypt, like Soldiers of Egypt and the Popular Resistance Movement. Since 2013, violence in mainland Egypt has escalated and developed into a low-level Islamist insurgency against the Egyptian government.
Al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula, or AQSP, is an Egyptian militant jihadist organization possibly formed by a merger between al-Qaeda operatives in Sinai and Ansar al Jihad. It was Al-Qaeda's branch in the Sinai peninsula, and is composed of many Al-Qaeda factions in the area. AQSP made international headlines in November 2014 when the organization pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) in a nine-minute audio speech released on Twitter.
The Battle of Ben Guerdane occurred on March 7, 2016, in the city of Ben Gardane in Tunisia on the border with Libya. Islamic State forces attempted to seize the city, but were repulsed by the Tunisian military. The clashes continued also on 8 and 9 of March in the area.
The Islamic State Insurgency in Tunisia referred to the low–level militant and terror activity of the Islamic State branch in Tunisia from 2015 to 2022. The activity of the Islamic State (IS) in Tunisia began in June 2015, with the Sousse attacks, though an earlier terror incident in Bardo Museum in March 2015 was claimed by ISIL, while the Tunisian government blamed Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade for the attack. Following massive border clashes near Ben Guerdane in March 2016, the activity of the IS group was described as an armed insurgency, switching from previous tactics of sporadic suicide attacks to attempts to gain territorial control. The armed insurgency was suppressed in 2022.
The October 2016 Sinai attacks was a terrorist attack on an Egyptian army checkpoint in the city of Bir al-Abed, Egypt, on 14 October 2016. A group of militants armed with assault rifles and heavier weapons attacked an Egyptian army checkpoint while mortar rounds and rockets were fired directed to a military checkpoint. In response, the Egyptian military forces killed around 15 militants following the attack. The Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai branch claimed responsibility in a statement released later the same day.
On 26 May 2017, masked gunmen opened fire on a convoy carrying Copts from Maghagha in Egypt's Minya Governorate to the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor, killing at least 33 people and injuring 22 others.
On 2 March 2018, at least eight heavily armed militants launched an assault on key locations throughout Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso. Targets included the French embassy and the headquarters of Burkina Faso's military.
Hesham Ali Ashmawy Mos'ad Ibrahim was a convicted terrorist who previously was an Egyptian Army officer, suspected by the government of having orchestrated and been involved in a number of terrorist attacks on security targets and state institutions, including the 2014 Farafra ambush and the 2015 assassination of Prosecutor general Hisham Barakat.
The Rafah terror attack was a terrorist attack conducted by the Islamic State – Sinai Province on an Egyptian Armed Forces checkpoint in Rafah in North Sinai on 7 July 2017 and resulted in the death and injury of 23 Egyptian soldiers, including the high-ranking El-Sa'ka officer, Col. Ahmed Mansi. 46 terrorists were killed and six cars of the militants were destroyed in the attack.
Egyptian Army 
