Umm Alaa's daughter stands in a room with walls marred by tank rounds, adjacent to the room where her grandmother was accidentally killed by security forces last month, one of many civilians slain by Egypt's military.

EL MEHEHDAYIA, Egypt — Like a buzzard hovering overhead in pursuit of its prey, the Egyptian military helicopter arrives over the village by 6 a.m., according to the residents of northern Sinai who’ve been subjected to weeks of government attacks.

As soon as the helicopter is in sight, the men flee the village. They know government ground forces won’t be far behind. Some go to the Israeli border, which they consider one of the safest places in the area, the one place they think the Egyptian forces can’t wantonly attack, lest they be embarrassed before the eyes of the international community. The women and children hide under their beds, some of the few pieces of furniture in the barren village homes. Then the destruction of the village begins.

Each company of ground troops seems to have its own form of attack. In one village, home after home is riddled with tank rounds. In another, the military flattens the homes. In a third, the military simply ransacks the houses it enters.

This has become the norm in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula as the country’s military avenges a string of assassinations and attacks on security forces that Sinai tribesmen launched in the weeks after the overthrow this summer of President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who enjoyed great support here.

The military not only attacks suspected insurgents, but it’s also taking out its wrath on everyone related to an alleged insurgent. Here in this Bedouin community that means everyone, as kin is never more than a house away.

Military officials say the attacks are aimed at destroying enemies of the state who’ve killed 125 members of the security forces and wounded nearly 1,000. They deny that the assaults are anything but carefully and precisely targeted.

“What random?” said Maj. Gen. Sameh Bashady, the director of North Sinai Security, clearly offended at the suggestion that the campaign was sweeping indiscriminately through villages. “We only assault very specific targets and that is why it is very difficult, because everything is very close to one another. We only assault specific targets without harming any innocent, and it is based on very accurate information.”

Ahmed Shaaban, a military spokesman, said every home targeted had tunnels, terrorists or weapons.

“If we were using excessive force, we would have finished the operations in 24 hours,” Shaaban told McClatchy.

The military’s side

As the military is the most revered and last remaining nationalist institution in this deeply polarized nation, many are eager to embrace its version of events.

“I think the military showed great restraint for 50 days during their attacks. I am not with destroying any house in the world. But I am also not an intel man who can say what that man did,” said Sheikh Abdel Hadi al-Tayek, a tribal leader here who supports the military effort. “I have two choices: Criticize the army and teach my son to hate the army … or be on the side of my army.”

Other residents insist there are innocent victims. Both versions are correct — and yet deeply misleading.

The military is keen to present its view: that it’s defending the nation from a terrorist haven. Foreign journalists are largely prohibited from traveling to the area — soldiers at checkpoints check IDs to see whether journalists are among travelers — and local journalists can face criminal charges.

That’s what happened to Ahmed Abu-Draa, who was sentenced Saturday to a six-month suspended sentence on charges of publishing false information about the military and entering a military zone. His crime stemmed from news stories that contradicted the military’s version of what took place in his home village. His family homes were among those struck in the offensive.

McClatchy managed to bypass the checkpoints on a recent visit to Sinai. What it found was a tit-for-tat battle that’s destroyed many of the area’s communities.

One village’s attack

In the village of al Moquataa, Umm Alaa — she declined to allow her full name to be published — and her family heard the helicopters overhead early Sept. 8.

In their barren concrete home, built by the government five years ago for $4,285, everyone took his own form of cover. Her husband, who asked to be referred to only as Silmy, took their two young children and fled toward the Israeli border. His mother refused to leave, thinking that the troops would never hurt an elderly woman.

As the sound of exploding tank rounds grew closer at around 12:30 p.m., Umm Alaa and her mother-in-law began running toward the back room. Umm Alaa said her mother-in-law had just wrapped an arm around her when a tank round ripped through the left side of her head.

“I knew she was gone when she fell on the ground,” Umm Alaa said.

Umm Alaa ran to the bedroom to hide. “They were all randomly shooting,” she said. Five minutes later, the military entered the house. “I heard one of them say an old woman had been killed.”

After they left, Umm Alaa came out to sleep on the floor next to her dead mother-in-law. Silmy returned at 9 a.m. the next day. A month later, the holes from the onslaught were still there, including the one from the round that entered through one side of the house, struck Silmy’s mother, then exited the other side.

The neighboring houses show similar damage from the assault.

Tracking civilian deaths

Sheikh Ibrahim el-Manei, the head of the Sinai tribal coalition, lives in neighboring el Mehehdayia. He once met with Morsi and Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi during the Morsi presidency, when there were attempts at reconciliation. These days, he keeps track of civilian deaths in northern Sinai, as residents said hospitals feared recording deaths by the military.

By his count, 52 civilians were killed from June 30, the start of Morsi’s ouster, through Sept. 30, while the military said there had been zero. Of those, 45 were shot and seven died when their houses were destroyed; six were children and three were women, el-Manei said.

But the story isn’t as simple as el-Manei described it. He’s a distant relative of Shadi el-Manei, or, as he’s known here, Prince Shadi. Just 25 years old, Prince Shadi is a founding member of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, one of the most powerful terrorist groups in the northern Sinai. Founded in 2010 originally to target Israel, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is an al-Qaida affiliate that’s claimed a variety of attacks on Israeli targets, including rockets fired in August that forced the airport at Eilat, an Israeli tourist destination, to close.

Haitham el-Manei said the group had shifted its focus to attacking the government after police violently broke up a weeks-long Cairo sit-in by Morsi supporters this summer. Hundreds of sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood died in that assault.

“Why did they destroy my house? Because I am the brother of Shadi,” Haitham said, adding that 30 family members’ homes have been destroyed so far. “But with every attack, the number increases” — meaning the number of people in Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.

Now residents quietly hint that they’re plotting their counterattack. There’s a furtive campaign to acquire weapons from places such as Sudan and Libya, in an area where every house already is heavily armed.

Even those who had no apparent affiliation with groups such as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis now openly support their efforts to reinstate Morsi.

“God willing, Morsi will be back,” Silmy said, looking over what the tank rounds did to his home. “Every time I hear gunshots, I think of my mother.”

Ending U.S. aid — Officials and experts in Israel responded Wednesday with a mixture of disappointment and alarm to the news that the United States planned to reduce its military aid to Egypt in response to this summer’s brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and the continuing violence it has spawned.

Israel views the aid as part and parcel of its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, and essential to the maintenance of stability in the region.

Israel has been involved in the Obama administration’s discussions on the cuts. Israeli officials would not comment publicly on the matter Wednesday, in part because there had been no official announcement yet from Washington.

But one Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate diplomacy involved, warned that the implications of punitive cuts in Egypt’s aid could go far beyond the issue of Israeli-Egyptian relations. The United States is playing with fire, he said.

“You cannot disassemble the peace treaty and take out this part or that part,” the official said. “But there are other elements in this conundrum. This is not just about Israel. This is about America’s standing in the Arab world.”

— New York Times News Service