Reuters in Cairo theguardian.com, Tuesday 8 October 2013
Three people killed in blast near state security building in south Sinai, and two hurt after RPG fired at satellite station in Cairo
Smoke rises from a security building in the southern Sinai town of el-Tor after a deadly explosion. Photograph: AP
Six Egyptian soldiers were killed by suspected militants near the Suez canal and a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a state satellite station in Cairo on Monday, suggesting the Islamist insurgency is picking up pace.
Three months after the ousting of Mohamed Morsi as president, thousands of his supporters defied a military crackdown to stage protests across the country on Sunday.
Dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed in clashes with Morsi's opponents, both civilian and military. The death toll from the violence was 53, state media said, with 271 wounded.
Authorities had warned that anyone protesting against the army on Sunday, a day of national celebration marking the anniversary of the 1973 war with Israel, would be regarded as an agent of foreign powers, and not an activist.
Morsi's supporters have called for further protests on Tuesday and Friday. They were angered by the publication of an interview with Egypt's army chief on Monday in which he said he had told Morsi as long ago as February that he had failed as president.
Sinai-based militants have also stepped up their attacks on the security forces. Medical sources said three people were killed and 48 injured in a blast near a state security building in south Sinai on Monday morning, in what witnesses claim was a car bombing.
Security sources said gunmen opened fire on the soldiers in Ismailia, a city on the canal, while they were sitting in a car at a checkpoint. In Cairo, two people were wounded in the attack on a state-owned satellite station.
David Hartwell, a Middle East analyst at IHS Jane's, said more explosive devices were being used in the capital. "It suggests that Sinai groups are infiltrating in greater numbers into northern Egypt," he said. "Either these groups are expanding out of Sinai, or the capabilities that they have is being used by other groups that may or not be affiliated with the Brotherhood."
The army chief, General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who has promised to follow Morsi's deposition in July with a political roadmap that would lead Egypt to free and fair elections, said in the interview published on Monday that Egypt's interests differed from those of the Brotherhood.
"I told Morsi in February you failed and your project is finished," the privately owned al-Masry al-Youm newspaper quoted Sisi as saying.
Militant attacks, including a failed assassination attempt on the interior minister in Cairo in September, are deepening uncertainty in Egypt along with the power struggle between the Brotherhood and the army-backed government.
Almost daily attacks by al-Qaida-inspired militants in the Sinai had killed more than 100 members of the security forces since early July, the army spokesman said on 15 September.
Last month a court banned the Brotherhood and froze its assets, pushing the group, which had dominated elections after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, further into the cold.
Gunmen kill six Egyptian soldiers near Suez canal | World news | theguardian.com
