The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Egypt’s crisis

  • Army kills 63 militants in Egypt

    Egypt’s military launched air strikes and ground operations that killed 63 Islamist militants in North Sinai on Sunday, security sources said, as the country grapples with an increasingly ambitious insurgency based in the region.

    The Sinai has recently witnessed some of the heaviest fighting between security forces and Islamist militants since the army toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.

    Security sources said on Sunday troops killed the 63 in villages between the towns of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah.

    The army found four militant hideouts and attacked them with Apache helicopters and ground troops. It also attacked vehicles belonging to the militants, the security sources added.

    Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate, recently renamed Sinai Province, has killed hundreds of soldiers and police since Mursi’s removal.

    Though the vast peninsula has long been a security headache for Egypt and its neighbours, the removal of Mursi brought new violence that has grown into an Islamist insurgency that has spread out of the region.

    On Monday, a car bomb in Cairo killed Egypt’s top prosecutor, the highest-profile official to die since the insurgency began.

    Egyptian government officials have accused Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood of links to Sinai attacks. The Brotherhood said it is a peaceful movement that wants to reverse what it calls a military coup through street protests.

    Egypt’s interior ministry said on Sunday it had arrested 12 Brotherhood members who had formed three cells with the intention of carrying out attacks on policemen, soldiers and military and police bases.

  • Bomb kills three policemen in Egypt

    A bomb blast beside Egypt’s foreign ministry killed three policemen on Sunday, including a key witness in a trial of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

    The blast, the worst attack in Cairo for months, killed two police lieutenant colonels and a recruit, according to the foreign ministry.

    Ajnad Misr, the Islamist militant group that carried out the last significant attack in Cairo, claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement posted on their official Twitter account.

    “This new operation shows we can penetrate and reach the vicinity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs…to destroy the officers of the criminal security agencies and make them taste some of what they have made Muslims taste,” it said.

    “Operations of retribution and revenge by this blessed group will not stop,” said the group, whose name means Soldiers of Egypt.

    The blast was the latest attack in a simmering insurgency against the United States-backed government, underlining security challenges facing President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Reuters reports.

    Sisi, who has just completed 100 days in office, has pushed through some badly-needed economic reforms such as a rise in fuel prices. But tackling Islamist militants, an issue that has dogged one Egyptian leader after another, is far from easy.

    Egypt has faced rising Islamist militant violence since Sisi ousted Mursi last year after mass protests against his rule and cracked down on Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which the government has declared a terrorist group.

  • 102 Islamists get 10-year sentence in Egypt

    More than 100 supporters of Egypt’s deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi were sentenced to ten years in jail on Saturday on charges of killing and inciting violence, judicial sources said.
    The verdicts for the 102 defendants, handed down ahead of a May 26-27 presidential election, relate to deaths that occurred during clashes in Cairo last July between supporters of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and security forces.
    Two other Brotherhood supporters who were defendants in the case received seven-year jail sentences, the sources said. Only 35 defendants were present in court, the others were tried in absentia.
    Militant violence has spiralled since last July, when the army toppled Mursi and the authorities launched a crackdown on his supporters in the Brotherhood. Thousands of the movement’s supporters have been arrested and hundreds killed, and its leaders are on trial.
    Another Egyptian court sentenced the leader of the Brotherhood and 682 supporters to death earlier this week, intensifying the crackdown and drawing Western criticism.
    Reuters reports that former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led the ousting of Mursi, is expected to win the presidential election.
    Egypt has declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group, but Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement said it is committed to peaceful activism.

  • Three die in Egypt church attack

    Three people, including a girl aged eight, died when gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a wedding party outside a Coptic Christian church in Cairo, BBC reports.

    At least nine others were wounded in the attack in Giza, officials said.

    There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

    Egypt’s Coptic Christian community has been targeted by some Islamists who accused the Church of backing the army’s overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi in July.

    The unidentified attackers fired indiscriminately as people left the church.

    A man and a girl were killed outside the church and a woman died on her way to hospital.

    “We heard a very loud sound as if something was collapsing,” one eyewitness said.

    “I found a woman seated in a chair with lots of bullet wounds, covered in blood. Many other people had fallen around her, including a child,” he added.

    Coptic priest Thomas Daoud Ibrahim said he was inside the church when the gunfire erupted.

    “What happened is an insult to Egypt, and it’s not only directed against Coptic Christians. We are destroying our own country,” he said.

     

     

  • Egyptian minister survives assassination attempt

    Egyptian minister survives assassination attempt

    Egyptian Interior Minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, on Thursday survived an assassination attempt by unknown persons.

    Report says bombs were set off near his motorcade.

    It was the first of such attack in Egypt in years.

    “The explosion occurred as the minister was on his way in a motorcade from his house in Nasr City, eastern Cairo, to the Interior Ministry building in central Cairo,” the state-run Middle East News Agency reported, quoting a security source.

    The News Agency of Nigeria gathered that six bodyguards were wounded and several cars destroyed.

    The explosion was caused by three bombs attached to a motorcycle parked outside the minister’s house.

    Ibrahim, who is responsible for the country’s security forces, has led a relentless crackdown on Islamists since the army deposed president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood following massive street protests against his rule.

    More than 1,000 people, mainly Brotherhood followers, have since been killed in the violence.

    Morsi, Egyptian first democratically elected president, is being detained by the army at a secret location.

     

     

  • Egypt to try Morsi

    Egypt to try Morsi

    Egypt’s state prosecutor says he has referred ousted President Mohammed Morsi for trial on charges of inciting the murder of protesters, BBC reports.

    The accusations relate to violence outside the presidential palace in Cairo last December when at least seven people were killed in clashes.

    14 other members of the Muslim Brotherhood are to stand trial on the same charges.

    Mr. Morsi has been held at a secret location since he was deposed in July.

    He faces a number of charges but this case is his first referral for trial.

    Since he was ousted from power, the military-backed interim government has cracked down on Brotherhood supporters, who are demanding Mr. Morsi’s reinstatement.

    Last month, hundreds of protesters died when security forces stormed pro-Morsi camps in the capital.

    The state prosecutor referred the former president for trial late on Sunday, Egypt’s state media reported.

    They said he would go on trial on charges of “incitement to murder and violence” in December 2012.

     

     

  • Egypt cabinet to hold crisis meeting

    Egypt’s cabinet is set to discuss the crisis in the country, where hundreds have died in clashes in recent days.

    The interim prime minister has put forward a proposal to legally dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood, BBC reports.

    Its members are key supporters of Mohammed Morsi, whose ousting as president sparked Egypt’s stand-off.

    The interim government is continuing to crack down on protests by the Brotherhood, but more demonstrations are planned around Cairo on Sunday.

    Overnight, television pictures showed protesters on the streets of Egypt’s second largest city, Alexandria, and in Helwan and Minya to the south of Cairo, in defiance of an overnight curfew.

    On Saturday Egypt’s security forces cleared the al-Fath mosque in Cairo after a long stand-off with Muslim Brotherhood supporters barricaded inside.

    The confrontation at the mosque continued for most of Saturday – with exchanges of gunfire between protesters and security forces, who were cheered on by crowds outside.

    The Brotherhood has called for daily demonstrations since a crackdown on its protest camps in Cairo on Wednesday left hundreds of people dead. Further clashes on Friday killed at least another 173 people across the country.

     

     

  • Obama condemns Egypt’s bloodshed

    Obama condemns Egypt’s bloodshed

    … Cancels joint military exercises

    United States President, Barack Obama, has strongly condemned the violence against Egyptian civilians, and has cancelled joint military exercises.

    He said force was not the way to resolve political differences.

    BBC says Mr. Obama’s comments come a day after security forces broke up the protest camps of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, leaving at least 500 people dead.

    Brotherhood members had been protesting for weeks about the army’s overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi in July.

    In the latest violence on Thursday, hundreds of Brotherhood members set fire to a government building near Cairo.

    Local TV footage showed firefighters evacuating employees from the building – which housed the offices of the Giza local government.

    State-run Nile News TV also reported clashes between Brotherhood members and residents in a suburb of Alexandria.