An Egyptian court on Monday sentenced 183 supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death on charges of killing police officers, as authorities continued their crackdown on Islamists.
The men were convicted of playing a role in the killings of 16 policemen in the town of Kardasa in August, 2013 during the upheaval that followed the army's ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
Also on Monday, an Egyptian police officer has been detained on suspicion of killing a suspected member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in hospital, the Interior Ministry has said.
The suspect was in custody and being treated in hospital for wounds suffered while he was allegedly planting explosives.
The ministry said in a statement late on Sunday that the man had provoked the policeman by insulting him. "Then the policeman lost control of his feelings," it said.
The army toppled president Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood in July 2013 after mass protests against his rule.
Security forces killed hundreds of Brotherhood supporters in the streets, arrested thousands of others and then jailed liberal activists charged with protesting without police permission.
The government has declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization and many of its top leaders have been put on trial. The movement says it is committed to peaceful activism.
Egypt's highest appeals court on Monday ordered the retrial of 12 Brotherhood supporters convicted of killing a police officer in 2013, in the violent upheaval that followed Morsi's overthrow, the state news agency MENA said.
In a separate case, a court jailed 66 Brotherhood supporters for three years on charges of attempted murder, membership of a terrorist organization and possession of weapons.
THREE WOMEN KILLED IN SINAI
Two women were killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while another died in crossfire between militants and security forces in two separate incidents in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, security and medical sources said on Sunday.
Security sources blamed the violence on Sinai Province, Egypt's most active militant network and the same group that claimed attacks on Thursday that killed at least 30 security personnel in the worst anti-government violence in months.
In Rafah, along the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, militants launched a rocket-propelled grenade at a military checkpoint, but hit a house instead, killing two women, security and medical sources said.
The wayward RPG also wounded two other women and two children, the sources said.
In another incident in Rafah, a woman was killed by a stray bullet during a firefight between militants and security forces, while two others were wounded, security sources said.
A man was also wounded after security forces shot at him at a checkpoint in provincial capital Al-Arish for violating a curfew that has been in place since the last major attacks in October, the sources said.
Egypt is facing a Sinai-based insurgency that has claimed the lives of hundreds of security forces since the army removed president Mohahmed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in June 2013 following mass protests against his rule.
The militant group Sinai Province, formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, changed its name when it pledged allegiance to Islamic State, the ultra-radical Sunni group that has taken over swathes of Iraq and Syria.
REUTERS
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