Militants have launched a bomb and gun attack on a mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai province, killing 235 people, state media say.
Witnesses say the al-Rawda mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed, near al-Arish, was targeted during Friday prayers.
It is the deadliest attack of its kind since an Islamist insurgency in the peninsula was stepped up in 2013.
Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has held emergency talks with security officials to decide how to respond.
Local police said gunmen arrived in four off-road vehicles and bombed the packed mosque before opening fire on worshippers, the Associated Press reported.
Pictures from the scene show rows of bloodied victims inside the mosque. At least 100 people were wounded, reports say.
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“They were shooting at people as they left the mosque,” a local resident who had relatives there told Reuters news agency. “They were shooting at the ambulances too.”
No group has yet claimed responsibility for what is one of the deadliest militant attacks in modern Egyptian history.
Locals are quoted as saying that followers of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, regularly gathered at the mosque.
Some jihadist groups, including so-called Islamic State (IS), see Sufis as heretics.
Source: BBC
