The imam had barely made it atop the mosque pulpit to deliver the sermon when intense gunfire rang out and Ebid Salem Mansour knew exactly what was going on.
“We knew that the mosque was under attack by (militants),” he said Saturday, a day after the attack, giving a detailed account of the deadliest assault by extremists against civilians in Egypt’s modern history.
At least 235 people were killed and more than a 100 wounded in Friday’s attack on a mosque filled with worshippers in the troubled region of northern Sinai.
Witnesses speaking to The Associated Press in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia where some of the wounded were taken spoke of horrific scenes during the approximately 20 minutes it took the militants to kill and maim worshippers. They spoke of some jumping out of windows, a stampede in a corridor leading to the washrooms and of children screaming in horror. Some spoke of their narrow escape from a certain death, others of families that lost all or most of their male members.
Mansour, a 38-year-old worker in a nearby salt factory, said he settled in Bir Al-Abd, the small town where the attack took place, three years ago to escape the bloodshed and fighting elsewhere in northern Sinai. He suffered two gunshot wounds in the legs.
“The shooting was random and hysterical at the beginning and then became more deliberate: Whoever they weren’t sure was dead or still breathing was shot dead,” Mansour said.
“I knew I was injured but I was in a situation that was much scarier than being wounded. I was only seconds away from a certain death,” he said. As the shooting took place, many of the worshippers recited their final prayers, he added.
The militants descended on the mosque in four off-road vehicles as hundreds worshipped inside. At least a dozen attackers charged in, opening fire randomly, the main cleric at the mosque, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Fatah Zowraiq, said. He spoke to the AP by phone from a Nile Delta town where he was recuperating from bruises and scratches suffered in the attack.
The militants, according to one witness, stormed the mosque from several doors and as soon as they opened fire, many worshippers started jumping out of windows.
“The small door that leads to the corridor for the wash rooms was about the only one where worshippers rushed to escape,” said a 38-year-old government employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation. “There was a stampede. I fell down and then bodies piled up on top of me. I was the only one alive underneath.”
“The shooting was heavy, insane and random,” he recalled. “These are not terrorists. These are not humans