Saturday, July 30, 2011

Egypt army detains suspects in Sinai clashes

Egypt's military has arrested 15 people in connection with clashes in the north Sinai city of El-Arish that left six people dead.

The arrests came late on Friday after gunmen tried to storm a police station, sparking a confrontation with security forces and the army, the country's official news agency MENA reported on Saturday.

Six people, including a policeman, a military officer and two soldiers, were killed in the clashes, and 21 people were wounded.
In the fifth attack on Egypt's natural gas pipeline to Israel since the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February, gunmen blew up a terminal in the northern Sinai Peninsula on Saturday.
No gas has been flowing through the pipeline since the last attack on the pipeline on July 12.
Officials said fighters destroyed a terminal in al-Shulaq, the last station before the line enters the sea on its way to Israel, just 16 km from Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip.
On Friday night, nearly 150 men in trucks and on motorbikes rampaged through El-Arish, firing assault rifles in the air and driving terrified residents into their homes, witnesses said.

They rode through the deserted streets of the north Sinai city waving black flags which read "There is no God but God", before attempting to storm the police station.
Earlier, the masked men used a bulldozer to damage a statue of the late President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by ultra-conservative Muslim activists in 1981.
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