4 Sinai civilians killed after Egypt army bombs house

At least four civilians have been killed and 12 injured after a bomb was dropped on a house in Abu Al-Araj, Sheikh Zuweid, on Saturday.

Ten-year-old Mohammed Masoud, 90-year-old Farha Ibrahim, 24-year-old Aya Juma Eid and 28 year-old Rania Juma Eid all died in the drone attack in Egypt’s northern Sinai Peninsula.

For years now the Egyptian government has waged a war on Sinai it says is against terrorism, but which locals say is a war on civilians aimed at systematically displacing them from their land.

In the last seven years 14 villages in Sheikh Zuweid have been razed by the Egyptian military. According to a Facebook post written by Sinai researcher Ahmed Salem:

There is no such thing as a random aerial bombing and there is no such thing as a flight that makes mistakes 20 times in the coordination and rockets directed with modern technologies, the error rate is almost zero; the village has 20 or 30 homes and you know them by name.

The aggression continues across the peninsula. Just one week ago a shell hit a truck carrying civilians from an olive farm to the city of Bir Al-Abd as they were travelling home, killing at least ten people from the same family. Six others were injured and taken to hospital.

READ: Egypt denies laying off large number of public servants to reduce spending

Following the attack the Arabic hashtag “Al-Sisi kills Sinai residents” was one of the top trending in the country.

A photograph of a baby with cuts on his head circulated online – the only survivor after the rest of his family died.

According to activists, the Egyptian government has been trying to remove the population of Bir Al-Abed for months now. Locals fear it will become the next Rafah, a city along the border with Gaza that has been completely flattened and the population displaced.

On 30 September the Egyptian military killed a six-year-old boy and his father in a revenge attack after Daesh attacked the Toffaha military checkpoint in Bir Al-Abed.

Suleyman Abu Dabbous, who works in a petrol station, was on his way home with his son Karim, 24, and his six-year-old grandson when the army opened fire on the car.