Egyptian authorities have arrested
13 members of the Muslim Brotherhood on suspicion of planting
bombs around the Suez Canal to disrupt shipping, security
sources said on Monday.
The waterway, the fastest shipping route between Europe and
Asia, is a vital source of hard currency for Egypt, particularly
since the 2011 uprising that toppled veteran autocrat Hosni
Mubarak and scared off tourists and foreign investment.
Egypt's government has escalated rhetoric against the
Brotherhood, which it regards as a terrorist group, since the
assassination of the country's top prosecutor last week.
The security sources said the men formed a 13-member cell
that included an employee at the Suez Canal Authority.
Prosecutors had ordered that they be detained for 15 days
and said they had planted bombs in areas including sanitation
and electricity facilities as well as on beaches, they said.
No one at the prosecutors' office was immediately available
to comment.
The army toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Brotherhood
in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.
The Brotherhood says it is committed to peaceful activism
designed to reverse what it calls a military coup, after former
army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Mursi, and then went on
to become elected president.
Security forces cracked down hard on Mursi's supporters
after he was ousted, killing hundreds in the streets at Cairo
protest camps and arresting thousands of others in what human
rights groups described as a return to repression.
Since then, state-run media has demonized the Brotherhood.
Last week Egyptian security forces stormed an apartment in a
western Cairo suburb and killed nine men whom they said were
armed, the interior ministry said.
Among the dead was a prominent lawyer for the Brotherhood
and a former lawmaker. The Brotherhood denied that the men were
armed and said they were holding an "organizational meeting".
Egypt does not distinguish between the Brotherhood and
groups such as Islamic State, which has an affiliate in Sinai,
epicenter of an Islamist militant insurgency that has killed
hundreds of soldiers and police since Mursi's fall.
REUTERS