The State Department said Monday it didn’t want to speculate on the details of an Egyptian military attack that on Sunday killed a dozen civilians.
Department Spokesperson John Kirby said he wasn’t prepared to comment on the incident, which left eight Mexican tourists dead, and could impact already-scrutinized aid to the authoritarian government of Egypt.
“The Egyptians have said they’re going to investigate this, this tragic accident,” Kirby said. “So we need to let the investigation proceed before we jump to any conclusions about exactly what happened and what the circumstances were and what hardware was involved.”
“Separate and distinct from that,” he then noted,” it is commonplace in foreign military sales programs to have end-user agreements on the types of equipment that the US military sells and provides to allies and partners.”
Egyptian government forces killed 12 and wounded 10 near an oasis popular with tourists in the country’s western desert. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said two Mexicans were among the dead, but Egyptian officials later said eight Mexicans and four Egyptians were killed, and eight Mexicans and two Egyptians were injured, according to Reuters.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry said Monday that the attack was carried out “by accident,” and that its military had believed it was targeting Islamist militants.
Six survivors told Mexico’s ambassador to Egypt that they had been attacked by government helicopters and aircraft.
“As members of the tourist convoy tried to flee, additional security forces on the ground fired on them,” Reuters noted.
One relative of a victim—both Mexican nationals—said she did not believe there was any mistake and said the party was in a forbidden area, contradicting assertions made by the Egyptian government.
In response to reporters’ questions at a daily press breifing, Kirby said Monday that the US provides Apache helicopters to the Egyptian military, and that they are “a platform that can be used, could be used, [and] have been used for counterterrorism missions.”
“One of the reason why the provision of those helicopters went forward was for counterterrorism purposes,” he added.
Some liberals in Congress are skeptical about the legality of assistance to Egypt, whatever the justification for it. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) recently asked Secretary of State John Kerry if “Egypt had run afoul of a federal law he sponsored that bars military units that have committed human rights abuses with impunity from receiving American aid, according to a New York Times op-ed published last month.
The senator last year blocked $650 million in US funding for Egypt’s military—assistance that was earmarked for the provision of 10 Apache helicopters.
Though the Obama administration had withheld some assistance to Cairo after the 2013 coup d’etat that brought current President Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power, in March, all funds appropriated by Congress to help Egypt’s military were released by the White House.
Despite—or, perhaps, because of—his authoritarian tendencies, Sisi has won over fans among congressional Republicans.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) earlier this year praised US support for the leader and criticized the Muslim Brotherhood—the former ruling party deposed and outlawed by Sisi, and the former head of the only democratically-elected government of Egypt.
“He doesn’t have any motive to attack the Egyptian people, in fact he has a powerful motive to protect and defend them,” King said in March.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) in January said he hoped “one day that our top leaders in this country will have the courage of President al-Sisi in Egypt and they will reflect, as general al-Sisi has, the will of the people of their country.”
