Four Egyptian soldiers killed by explosion in Sinai peninsula
CAIRO: Four Egyptian soldiers were killed in an explosion that hit their armoured vehicle on Saturday in the northern Sinai peninsula, where the government is battling an IS-led insurgency, security sources said.
The incident occurred about 20 km (12 miles) south of the Mediterranean town of Al Arish.
An insurgency in Egypt’s rugged Sinai region has gained pace since the army toppled president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013. The revolt, mounted by IS’s Egyptian branch, has killed hundreds of soldiers and police. Militants have also started to attack Western targets within the country.
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, the former military chief who led Mursi’s overthrow, describes militancy as an existential threat to Egypt, an ally of the United States.
On Thursday, 10 soldiers were killed in the Sinai peninsula when their vehicles were hit by two improvised bombs during an operation in which 15 suspected militants were also killed, the army said. Two policemen were killed near al-Arish in a separate incident, the interior ministry said.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian appeals court suspended a jail sentence on Saturday against the former head of the journalists’ union for harbouring colleagues wanted by authorities and for spreading false news, judicial sources and a lawyer said. Yehia Qalash and two colleagues were sentenced to two years in jail in November in a case which Amnesty International condemned as a further crackdown on freedom of expression in Egypt. The appeals court on Saturday gave Qalash and the two board members, Khaled Al Balshy and Gamal Abdel Rahim, a one-year suspended jail sentence.
Prosecutors had ordered the three men face trial last May, amid efforts by Egyptian authorities to quell rising dissent against army general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
The charges against them related to a police raid last May on the Journalists’ Syndicate to arrest two opposition journalists who had sought shelter there from ar- rest. Union officials said police stormed the building for the first time in the syndicate’s 75-year history. The interior ministry denied that, but confirmed police had arrested the two journalists, Mahmoud El Sakka and Amr Badr.
Sakka and Badr, who are still awaiting trial, had criticised a deal between Egypt and Saudi Arabia which would have transferred two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. The deal has since been blocked by a court in Cairo which ruled the islands were sovereign Egyptian territory. Qalash’s defence lawyer Shaaban Said said he considered Saturday’s ruling satisfactory but he still planned to appeal to the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest court.