Sara Omer, the deputy head of Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau, said via Twitter that “the death of one of Al Jazeera’s journalists, who were targeted by an Egyptian attack while covering a protest in North Sinai on Sunday, is an act of terror, especially given that the country is now seeing a wave of sectarian and ethnic terrorism, including this week in the Sinai.”
The journalists were killed in a car bomb explosion on their way home from a protest in North Sinai on Sunday (17 September), Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the region, Mohamed Vall, said via Twitter.
The Egyptian army said a group of four armed militants disguised as soldiers and wearing explosive vests set off a car bomb close to a checkpoint at dawn as they were going to buy supplies near the town of el-Arish.
“When the gunmen were stopped on the road, they opened fire from behind the vehicle, wounding the driver,” the army said in a statement.
One of the journalists was killed and another was hurt when the car was bombarded, it said, adding that a third journalist was killed at the scene. A civilian was also killed, it added. The identities of the injured were not immediately clear.
“We condemn again in the strongest possible terms the attack on Egyptian journalists,” Ms Omer said in a statement.
Al Jazeera’s head of business operations in the region, Othman al-Khatib, said Al Jazeera is in contact with the family of the injured young man. He added that while the Egyptian government condemns the attack, it is “not ruling out the possibility that this could have been a terrorist attack”.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Friday vowed to “fight terrorism in all its forms” after a wave of explosions ripped through Cairo’s El-Arish, some 200km (125 miles) north of the Suez Canal, killing at least one person and wounding 16.
“This wave of terror and violence is just the beginning. We are determined to fight it,” Mr al-Sisi said outside the presidential palace.
Security has been stepped up significantly in Egypt since the overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
It recently moved to restrict media access at a popular square in the capital, while police last month arrested members of Al Jazeera’s Cairo bureau head, Mohammed al-Jubeir, on suspicion of planning an attack at some other media organisations