Egypt rounds up dozens in Sinai
Aljazeera’s correspondent in Cairo reports that Egyptian security forces have arrested dozens of people from a Bedouin area called Lahsan, located in central Sinai.
Those arrested were suspected of involvement in an attack on members of a multinational peacekeeping force on 15 August, the correspondent said on Friday.
Egyptian security forces have remained active in north-eastern Sinai and Sharm el-Shaikh as part of an ongoing security mission in the area.
Meanwhile, agencies report that Egyptian police have arrested one more man suspected of belonging to a group that killed at least 64 people in three bomb attacks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Shaikh last month.
Security sources said on Friday the man, named Hassan el-Arayshi, was arrested in the Sinai Peninsula, without giving the circumstances.
A second man, farmer Abdel Hadi Mahmoud Hamida, was arrested but police later concluded that Arayshi had been using a mobile phone registered in Hamida’s name and the farmer himself had nothing to do with the bombings, they added.
High explosives
Hamida was still being held for further questioning.
The arrests bring to at least four the total number of people held on suspicion of carrying out the 23 July attacks, the most deadly in Egypt for more than 20 years.
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The state newspaper al-Ahram said on Sunday that police had arrested three suspected members of the group and had found about a tonne of high explosives at a farm near the north Sinai town of el Arish.
An Interior Ministry official said he had no information on the report of new arrests.
The group suspected of attacking three tourist targets in Sinai last October was based in el Arish and Egyptian officials have linked the two sets of explosions.
Apart from those arrested, Egyptian police have held hundreds of people for questioning about the explosions, which they suspect were the work of a Muslim group with roots in the Sinai Bedouin community.