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.
Rocket attacks on the neighboring cities of Eilat, in Israel, and Aqaba, in Jordan, have been a tactic used by militants from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and organizations linked with Al-Qaeda because of the relative ease of launching rocket attacks against these two cities from adjacent desert areas. Most of these attacks target Eilat, the last attack on Aqaba was in 2010.
On 23 December 2011, two seemingly coordinated bombings occurred in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The alleged suicide car bombs exploded outside Syrian military intelligence agency buildings, killing 44 people and injuring 166. According to Syrian state media, most of the dead were civilians. The attacks took place during the Syrian uprising. The Syrian government blamed Islamist militants, while the Syrian opposition accused the government of staging the attacks to justify its crackdown on the uprising.
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.
Protests against the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état erupted in July 2013. Immediately following the removal of President Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian Armed Forces on 3 July 2013 amid demonstrations against Morsi's rule, many protesters amassed near the Rabia Al-Adawiya Mosque to call for Morsi's return to power and condemn the military, while others demonstrated in support of the military and interim government. Deadly clashes such as Rabaa massacre continued for several days, with three particularly bloody incidents being described by officials as "massacres" perpetrated by security forces. During the month of Ramadan, prime minister Hazem al-Beblawy threatened to disperse the ongoing Pro-Morsi sit-ins in Rabaa al-Adaweya square and al-Nahda square. The government crackdown of these protests occurred in a violent dispersal on 14 August 2013. In mid-August, the violence directed by the army towards the protesters escalated, with hundreds killed, and the government declaring a month-long nighttime curfew.
Mohamed Ibrahim Moustafa, often referred to simply as Mohamed Ibrahim was the Minister of Interior of Egypt, from January 2013 until March 2015.
Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, or Ansar Al-Quds, was a jihadist, extremist terrorist group based in Sinai from 2011-14.
On 24 and 25 January 2014 a series of bombs exploded in Greater Cairo. The first four explosions occurred on the day before the anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, with the fifth coming on the anniversary itself.
The 2014 Taba bus bombing was a terrorist attack on a tourist coach in Taba, Egypt on 16 February 2014. The bus had been parked, waiting to cross into Israel at the Taba Border Crossing, when a lone suicide bomber entered the open bus and detonated his explosives. Four people – three South Koreans and the Egyptian bus driver were killed, and 17 others injured.
The following lists events from 2014 in Egypt.
Soldiers of Egypt or Ajnad Misr was a Salafist Islamist militant group that has been operating near Cairo, Egypt. The group was founded by Humam Muhammed in 2013, after he split away from the Ansar Bait al-Maqdis militant group. The group claims that its attacks are "retribution" for the August 2013 Rabaa Massacre; notably, the group targets only security forces. It has warned civilians of the presence of bombs that it has placed.
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.
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.
The Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, also known as Islamic State in Gaza, is an Islamist militant group affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant that was reportedly active in the Gaza Strip around 2015. Its goals have consistently matched those of the Islamic State, in that it seeks to establish the al-Sham caliphate. As such, it opposes all forms of Palestinian nationalism while also supporting the elimination of all Jews and other ethno-religious 'infidels' from the region.
On 1 July 2015, the IS-affiliated Sinai Province militant group launched the largest scale battle the Sinai Peninsula has seen since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, killing 21 soldiers in the numerous attacks which targeted multiple Egyptian army checkpoints and the Sheikh Zuweid police station in the Sinai Peninsula. More than 100 militants were reportedly killed by the army during the battle.
The Islamic State – Sinai Province is a branch of the terrorist Islamist group Islamic State that is active in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
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.
On 11 December 2016, a suicide bomber killed 189 people and injured 400+ others at St. Peter and St. Paul's Church, a chapel next to Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, seat of the Coptic Orthodox Pope, in Cairo's Abbasia district. Egypt's President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi identified the bomber as 22-year-old Mahmoud Shafiq Mohammed Mustafa, who had worn a suicide vest. el-Sisi reported that three men and a woman have been arrested in connection with the attack; two others are being sought. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mohab Mostafa Al Sayed Qasim is the suspected ringleader of an Egyptian terrorist cell responsible for carrying out the December 2016 Botroseya Church bombing. Following the bombing, Qasim's 2015 trip to Qatar became the subject of a controversy over alleged Qatari ties to the terrorist attack.
