Egypt Kills More than 60 Militants in Effort to Gain Control of Sinai

The Egyptian military has killed at least 63 militants in an effort to regain control of a Sinai town that was overrun by insurgents just days after the successful assassination of the country's highest ranking legal official.

Reuters reports that the casualties occurred in small villages between the towns of Sheik Zuwaid, which was so overrun by militants last week that the Egyptian military had to use warplanes, and Rafah, which is on the border with the Gaza Strip.

The Sinai has been home to an insurgency since the Egyptian military, led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Morsi in 2013. The insurgents regularly attack military and police installations, but the attack on Sheik Zuwaid was the largest and most daring offensive yet. The large military response and use of warplanes suggest it was also one of the most successful.

The insurgency has increased in intensity since the government sentenced Morsi to death on trumped up charges. Within just hours of the death sentence, three judges in the Sinai were shot to death as they traveled to court. The Muslim Brotherhood, which Morsi led, has condemned all of these attacks, which have been carried out by a number of radical Islamist groups. Among those groups is at least one that has publicly allied itself with the Islamic State.

The war on the judiciary recently claimed its highest-ranking official with the assassination of Hisham Barakat as his motorcade traveled through the streets of Cairo. Barakat was the attorney general of a legal system that has given out mass death sentences, even though some of the defendants were able to prove they weren't even in the same town at the time of their alleged crimes.