Egyptian warplanes on May 26 carried out air-strikes on what President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi called six "terrorist training camps" in Libya after a new massacre of Coptic Christians earlier in the day. The latest of a series of bloody attacks on Copts in Egypt came as Christians were headed to the Saint Samuel Monastery, near the city of Minya, some 220 kilometers south of Cairo. Masked gunmen cut off the bus in three pick-up trucks, and opened fire before fleeing the scene. At least 28 people were killed, many of them children. The retaliatory air-strikes apparently struck locations of the Mujahedeen Shura Council in Libya's eastern city of Derna. (Al Arabiya, BBC News, France24, Egyptian Streets, Al Jazeera)
Foreign powers, including Egypt, have been sporadically bombing targets in Libya for months. Some air-strikes in Libya have been claimed by no power, and remain mysterious. Previous attacks on Egyptian Christians have been claimed by ISIS, but the Mujahedeen Shura Council is currently at war with the Islamic State.
Egypt: new massacre of Coptic Christians
Presumed ISIS militants fired on two buses filled with Coptic pilgrims near the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Egypt’s western desert, killing at least seven. (NYT)