Egyptian FM tours region amid Lebanon crisis,

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday dispatched his foreign minister for talks with Arab nations over the regional crisis triggered by the resignation of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, the ministry said on Saturday.

Hariri’s resignation has plunged Lebanon into crisis, pushing the Arab country to the forefront of rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite revolutionary Iran, and heightening regional tensions.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will tour Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia, for bilateral talks, but also to discuss regional developments with a message from Sisi, the ministry statement said.

“The foreign minister’s tour comes in the framework of permanent consultations between Egypt and Arab brothers on mutual relations and the conditions in the region, especially in the shadow of developments in Lebanon’s political arena,” it said.

A Foreign inistry spokesman said the minister will confirm Egypt’s position on the need for Arab solidarity and to avoid negative fallout on regional security.

Saudi Arabia says Hariri resigned because Hezbollah, which was included in Hariri’s coalition government, had “hijacked” Lebanon’s political system. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shi’ite group, has accused Riyadh of detaining Hariri and forcing him to resign as a way to destabilize the country.

Sisi said on Wednesday he was against military strikes on Iran or the Tehran-backed Hezbollah, saying there was enough turmoil in the Middle East, and has stressed the importance of de-escalation.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states have given Egypt aid ever since general-turned-president Sisi led the military’s ouster of president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.

Also on Saturday, the Egyptian military said its jets destroyed 10 vehicles carrying weapons, ammunition and smuggled goods near the country’s western desert border with Libya.

Egypt’s porous border with Libya has long been a headache for security forces as weapons flow across the frontier, but an attack on police last month claimed by a new terrorist group has highlighted the security challenges in the western desert.

“The air force dealt with them and destroyed them completely and killed all the elements inside,” the army statement said, without giving a date of the operation.

Egypt’s security forces are battling a stubborn Islamic State insurgency in the northern Sinai region, where jihadists have killed hundreds of police and troops since 2014 when attacks there started to increase.

On Friday, medical and security sources said that suspected jihadists shot dead at least nine truck drivers in Sinai late the day before when they targeted a transport convoy, setting the vehicles on fire.

Egypt’s security forces have since 2014 been battling an Islamic State affiliate in northern Sinai, where terrorists have mostly hit police and soldiers but also occasionally targeted infrastructure and businesses.

Two security sources in El-Arish, the area capital, said armed men attacked the convoy, which was carrying coal to a cement factory.

The bodies of the truck drivers, all shot to death, were taken to the morgue of Suez public hospital, four medical sources said.

A military spokesman said there was no official statement. An Interior Ministry official did not respond to a request for information.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

“They have threatened us repeatedly, asking that we don’t work for the army’s companies. We informed the factory management of the threats and asked them for more protection,” one local truck driver, Ismail AbdelRaouf, told Reuters.

Hundreds of police and soldiers have been killed since the insurgency quickened pace in northern Sinai after the 2013 ouster of Morsi.

A home-grown jihadist group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, declared allegiance to Islamic State in 2014 and has since tried to spread outside the peninsula by targeting Christians with attacks on churches on the mainland.

Sisi, who presents himself as a bulwark against Islamist terrorists in the Middle East, has said Islamic State fighters might try to enter Libya and Egypt after their defeats in Iraq and Syria.

Security forces have also faced attacks in the western desert region bordering Libya, where security sources say a former Egyptian special forces officer turned jihadist allied to al-Qaida was responsible for an ambush on a police operation last month.