Egyptian warplanes struck Islamic State targets in Libya at dawn Monday, hours after a grisly online video released by the group purported to show the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians on a Mediterranean beach.
Training camps and weapons caches were among the targets, and all the aircraft returned safely to base, state television reported. President Abdel Fattah Sisi, the former military chief, had declared earlier that Egypt had the "right to respond" to the murder of its citizens.
The killings of the 21 Coptic Christians drew a wave of revulsion across Egypt, despite the Copts' often disenfranchised status in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. Official statements cast the executions as an attack on all Egyptians, which would be dealt with as such.
"Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield that will protect them all," the Egyptian military command said in a statement, describing the airstrikes as "retribution." Muslim clerics, too, were quick to condemn the killings, with Egypt's Al Azhar, the seat of Sunni learning, describing the executions as "barbaric."
The bloody episode appeared to signal a determination to expand the Islamic State's footprint beyond Iraq and Syria, the two countries where it has made its greatest military gains. Libya, which has collapsed into warring factions presided over by rival militias, offers fertile territory for the Sunni Muslim militant group, with enormous oil wealth at stake.
In the grim footage, shot on a wintry beach, the prisoners were seen being marched into place by a line of black-clad, knife-wielding captors. At first, they kneel, the lips of some of the doomed men moving in apparent prayer. Then they were forced to lie face-down in the sand, and the executioners reached down and begin sawing away at their necks.
A narration of sorts was delivered by a man wearing camouflage and a light-brown mask, who is seen taking part in the killings—reminiscent of a figure known in the West as "Jihadi John," who has carried out similar executions in Syria after delivering declarations in British-accented English. In the latest video, the apparent ringleader, speaking colloquial and nearly unaccented English, intones: "This filthy blood is just some of what awaits you."
And in an explicit bid to stress the growing reach of the group and its proximity to European shores, the mass execution is described as taking place on Libya's Mediterranean coast—"south of Rome."
Unlike some previous Islamic State videos that have cut away before the victims' heads are sawed off, this one presented the beheadings in graphic, jagged jump-cuts, culminating with the severed heads being placed on the backs of the corpses.
Despite growing dangers over the past year as Libya has fallen into deepening chaos, impoverished Egyptian laborers have continued to flock to the neighboring, energy-rich state, where wages are far higher than at home. Many are Christians, and when the two groups of Copts were seized, statements from their Islamist captures made it clear they were targeted primarily for their religion.
Although the Sisi government had made overtures to the Coptic Christian community, thought to make up between 10% and 15% of Egypt's population of about 90 million, many Copts consider themselves a downtrodden minority. They face discrimination in jobs and housing, and were singled out for retribution when Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was toppled in a popularly supported coup in 2013.
On Friday, relatives of the kidnapped men, mostly from poor areas in southern Egypt, had staged rallies and prayers in an attempt to galvanize a stronger response from the Egyptian government. Officials assured them that all possible steps were being taken to save their loved ones.
On Sunday, Sisi convened an emergency meeting of top security officials and Egypt's government declared seven days of official mourning.
The Egyptian Christians had been seized in the central Libyan city of Sirte, where fierce fighting had broken out. Libya has been riven for months by armed militias, but with the relatively recent addition of a deadly and dreaded element: fighters declaring their loyalty to the fanatics of the Islamic State, who have gloried in barbaric and well-documented acts in the wide bands of territory they control in Syria and Libya.
Most recently, those included the death of a young American woman from Arizona, Kayla Mueller, who had been held hostage by the group. Prior to that, the group caused worldwide revulsion when it burned a captured Jordanian pilot to death in a cage. Victims in recent months have also included a string of Americans and Britons, including journalists and aid workers who were beheaded, and more recently two Japanese nationals beheaded a week apart.
Laura.King@latimes.com
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times12:25 a.m.: This story was updated throughout with staff reporting and additional information about the Egyptian military response to the hostages' beheadings.
11:12 p.m. Sunday: This story was updated throughout with additional details and background.
This story was published at 10:44 p.m. Sunday.
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