(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The Islamic State group released a video yesterday purportedly showing the beheading of Egyptian Coptic Christians the militants say they captured in Libya.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi immediately called an urgent meeting of the country's top security body and declared seven days of mourning.
Al Azhar, the prestigious Cairo-based seat of Islamic learning, denounced the "barbaric" killings.
The footage released by IS online shows handcuffed hostages wearing orange jumpsuits being beheaded by their black-suited captors in a coastal area the group said was in the Libyan province of Tripoli.
In the latest issue of the IS online magazine Dabiq, the group said 21 Egyptian hostages were being held in Libya, and in yesterday's video, shot from several angles, the beheadings of at least 10 hostages were seen.
Egyptian state television also broadcast some of the footage from the IS video. The security body that will meet in Cairo groups Sisi, his defence and interior ministers and top military figures. Egypt last year denied reports of having carried out air strikes on Islamists in Libya.
In a statement, Al Azhar said it had heard the news of the beheadings "of a group of innocent Egyptians with great sorrow and grief". "Al Azhar stresses that such barbaric action has nothing to do with any religion or human values."
The latest IS video comes just days after the jihadists released footage showing the gruesome burning alive of a Jordanian pilot the group captured after his F-16 came down in Syria in December.
The highly choreographed video showing the killing of Maaz Al Kassasbeh triggered global outrage. Yesterday's video, entitled "A message signed with blood to the nation of the cross", has a scrolling caption in the first few seconds referring to the hostages as "People of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian Church".
One of the masked captors, wearing a military uniform and pointing a knife to the camera said in English: "Today we are in the south of Rome, in the land of Islam Libya... the sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood."
Al Qaeda founder Bin Laden was shot and killed in a dramatic helicopter raid by US special forces in Pakistan in the early hours of May 2, 2011 and later buried at sea in an unidentified location.
A background voice believed to be IS spokesman Abu Mohamed Al Adnani says: "We swear to Allah we will take revenge, even if it takes a while."
Egyptian women Camilia Shehata and Wafa Constantine were the wives of Coptic priests whose alleged conversion sparked a sectarian dispute in Egypt in 2010. Shehata went missing for five days in July that year after a domestic argument before police found her and escorted her back home. When she went missing, Coptic Christians staged protests, but when she was returned, Islamists took to the streets alleging she had willingly converted to Islam and was being held by the church against her will.
Wafa Constantine also went missing, in 2004, reportedly after her husband refused to give her a divorce. She was temporarily sequestered at a convent as reports of her conversion were circulated.
In January, the IS branch in Libya claimed it had abducted 21 Christians. A spokesman for the Egyptian foreign ministry confirmed to AFP in Cairo at the time that 20 Egyptians had been kidnapped in two separate incidents.
Meanwhile, Bahrain has deployed war planes to Jordan, the state news agency BNA said yesterday, becoming the second Gulf Arab country to send warplanes to help in the fight against Islamist militants in Syria and Iraq. Jordan has taken a leading role in conducting air strikes against Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Iraq since the militants killed a Jordanian pilot, Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, who was captured by the group after his plane crashed in Syria in December. "A group of Bahraini Royal Air Force planes have landed in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to participate in the international effort to annihilate terrorism," BNA said.
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