7 civilians killed in airstrikes in Syria’s Idlib

Egypt first imposed the current state of emergency last April after two church bombings killed at least 45 people. It was extended in July and again in October, state news agency MENA said on Tuesday.

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who is widely expected to run for a second term in an election due early this year, issued a decree on Tuesday to extend the state of emergency.

The latest extension was to allow security forces to “take (measures) necessary to confront the dangers and funding of terrorism and safeguard security in all parts of the country,” MENA reported, citing Egypt’s official gazette.

Egypt faces a Daesh insurgency in the remote North Sinai region that has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen in recent years and has expanded to include

CAIRO: Egypt is to extend its nationwide state of emergency for three months from Jan. 13 to help tackle “the dangers and funding of terrorism” while in another development it executed four militants for killing three military academy cadets in a 2015 bomb attack.

BEIRUT: At least seven civilians, including five children, were killed Tuesday by airstrikes in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, the last outside government control, a monitor said.

Government and allied forces backed by Russian warplanes have been battling militants and opposition fighters for over a week in an area straddling the border between Idlib and Hama provinces.

The airstrikes targeted the town of Khan Subul in the center of Idlib province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“There were at least seven dead, five children and two women,” the Observatory said.

“We do not know if these were air strikes by the Syrian regime or the Russians,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The government push on the edge of Idlib province follows two months of sporadic fighting that the UN says has displaced more than 60,000 people.

“Displacement sites are reportedly overwhelmed. Some services are 400 percent above their planned capacity to serve,” the UN said.

Egyptian policemen stand guard at Egypt’s national police academy, where a criminal court sentenced 12 Brotherhood leaders to 20 years in prison over the killing of protesters in 2012, in Cairo. (AP/file)