3 policemen shot to death in Egypt's Sinai

An Egyptian security official says snipers have killed three policemen in the volatile Sinai Peninsula.
 
The official says the coordinated attacks killed police guarding an administrative building, a TV station and a police station in El-Arish, the main city in northern Sinai near the border with Gaza and Israel.
 
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
 
Islamic militants, long active in the area, have intensified their attacks against security forces since the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on July 3. The almost daily attacks have targeted the El-Arish airport, checkpoints and police stations.
 
At least 13 policemen have been killed in Sinai since then.

Also, a bus carrying Egyptian soldiers crashed into a truck on a highway near the Mediterranean coast early Sunday, killing 16, a security official said.
 
The accident took place on the highway between Cairo and the port city of Alexandria as the soldiers were heading home from their military base in northwestern Egypt for a vacation to join their families during the holy month of Ramadan, the official said.
 
The official said the dead included 15 soldiers and a driver, while another 40 people were injured. They were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.
 
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
 
Road accidents are common in Egypt due to badly maintained roads and poor enforcement of traffic laws. According to a 2012 World Health Organization report, road accidents kill about 12,000 people each year in a population of about 90 million.

On another note, Egypt's official news agency says a panel charged with amending the constitution in the aftermath of the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi is meeting for the first time.
 
MENA says the panel, made up of 10 legal experts and senior judges, is meeting Sunday at Cairo's parliament building. They are expected to propose changes to many of the more controversial provisions in the constitution drawn up last year by an Islamist-dominated assembly and passed in a referendum.
 
President Adly Mansour, installed after Morsi's July 3 overthrow, announced the panel's formation Saturday.
 
According to a military-backed timetable for a return to democratic rule to Egypt, the panel has 30 days to suggest amendments. A second 50-member committee will have 60 days to review those amendments before citizens vote in a referendum.

This comes as Egypt's new minister of supplies said that the biggest mistake deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made was stopping wheat imports, pledging to ensure that supplies of a strategic good like wheat do not reach the critically low levels they did during Morsi's year in office.    

Mohamed Abu Shadi, a 62-year-old former police general with a doctorate in economics, said Morsi's government made "incorrect calculations" regarding Egypt's wheat stocks.    

The estimates made by former supplies minister Bassem Ouda, who hails from Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, were "based on guesses, not on facts", Abu Shadi told Reuters in an interview.    

When asked why Morsi's administration was unable to accurately assess its wheat stocks, a crucial issue for a country where much of the population of 84 million relies on heavily subsidized loaves of bread, Abu Shadi replied: "That was why he left."    

Abu Shadi said Egypt's current stocks of wheat were enough to last until Nov. 25 adding that after the arrival of 480,000 tons purchased this month, Egypt would have stocks to last until the end of the year.    

Abu Shadi said the military-backed interim government would aim to increase total stocks to between 5 million and 6.5 million tons by the end of Egypt's current fiscal year next June. He said the government currently had reserves of 3-6 million to 3.7 million tons of local wheat and 500,000 of imported wheat.    

Sworn in last week as part of the military-backed interim government running the country, Abu Shadi is in charge of regulating wheat stocks and dealing with the subsidized fuel and bread system that eats up almost a quarter of the state's budget.    

Bread has long been a sensitive issue in Egypt. Mubarak faced unrest in 2008 when the rising price of wheat caused shortages. Similar problems in the 1970s provoked riots against former President Anwar Sadat.    

Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, but it froze its international purchase for months, from February until the eve of Morsi's overthrow on July 3, hoping for a bigger domestic crop. It was its longest absence from the market in years.    

Although it also grows its own wheat, Egypt still needs huge quantities of foreign wheat with higher gluten content to make flour suitable for subsidized bread.    


REUTERS/AP