And yet, according to Fox, most of the people killed were Muslims. I'm trying to understand the logic here, but so far I've failed.
Al Qaeda never claims direct responsibility for terrorist activities. It's in the AQ handbook. The Abu Hafs al Masry Brigade is one nom de gurre they use, it refers to Abu Hafs, Al Qaeda's number three who stopped a smart bomb in Afghanistan in 2001. Another catch-all "organization" that Al Qaeda uses to let the world know that they did it, without admitting legal responsibility, is the Abdullah Azzam Brigade.
Azzam was a reasoned, peaceful man who organized a series of guesthouses (way stations) in Pakistan to facilitate the movement of non Afghan mujahideen into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
He befriended a young man from Saudi Arabia who handled a lot of the clerical details of the safehouse organization named Osama Bin Laden.
After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Azzam wanted to use the organization to improve the quality of life in Afghanistan, while Bin Laden wanted to turn it to terrorism. Azzam, widely reknowned as a peaceful near prophet, refused and Osama Bin Laden ordered him assassinated. Out one side of Osama's lying face, he claims he holds dear father Azzam in great regard, out the other side of his lying face, he had him killed so that he, Osama, could control the large organization Azzam had built, and turn it to serve as a tool for killing infidels.
By this time, Bin Laden was firmly under the spell of Ayman al Zawahiri, an Egyptian exile, under death sentence in Egypt, who also served prison time in Egypt for implications he was involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Bin Laden left Pakistan to establish an alibi, Zawahiri and the Egyptians under him killed Azzam with a bomb, and Al Qaeda and the more radical segment of the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood under Al Zawahiri merged. In effect, Zawahiri's much larger organization took over Al Qaeda, with only the name and Bin Laden surviving the merger at their previous levels of influence.
Ayman hates the Egyptian government about as much as Osama hates the Saudi royal family, hence yesterday's attack in Egypt.
This attack was also a way for Al Qaeda to save face. With Thursday's attempted bombings in London fizzling out without exploding, and the visceral imagery of a terrorist held down and shot five times in the head, Al Qaeda needed some kind of easy success to point to to satisfy those who fund them, the "shareholders" if you will.
The timing indicates that this was to be a two prongewd thrust, more mass bombings in London Thursday, and an exploding resort in Egypt Friday/Saturday. Unfortunately, the bombs failed in London, and the global press was asleep or out drinking for the grand attack in Egypt, and it seems to me that AQ's objectives fell a long way short of being met. I suspect we wil see more from them very soon, probably agianst even softer, less defended targets. They have to get up on the board now, people are starting to talk.