Gunmen kill five Egyptian soldiers near Suez Canal

Gunmen killed five Egyptian soldiers near the Suez Canal city of Ismailia on Monday, security sources said, in a series of attacks that highlight growing insecurity since the army ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

In an interview published on Monday, Egypt's army chief said he had told Mursi as long ago as February that the president had failed, about five months before the military removed him.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made the remarks before dozens died on Sunday in clashes involving security forces, supporters of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood and their opponents.


The security sources said the gunmen opened fire on the soldiers while they were sitting in a car at a checkpoint near Ismailia on the Canal, a vital global trade route.

In a separate incident, an explosion near a state security building in South Sinai killed two people and injured 48, medical sources said. A witness said the explosion was caused by a car bomb.

In the most brazen attack of the day, assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a state-owned satellite station in the Maadi suburb of Cairo on Monday, wounding two people, security officials said.

Attacks by Sinai-based militants have risen sharply since the army toppled Mursi and promised a roadmap that would lead Egypt to free and fair elections.

Almost daily attacks by al Qaeda-inspired militants in the Sinai have killed more than 100 members of the security forces since early July, the army spokesman said on Sept. 15.

Militant violence elsewhere in Egypt has raised fears that an Islamist insurgency, like one eventually crushed in the 1990s by then president Hosni Mubarak, could take hold beyond Sinai.

The militant attacks, including a failed assassination attempt on the interior minister in Cairo in September, are deepening insecurity in Egypt along with the power struggle between the Brotherhood and the army-backed government.

The death toll from clashes in Egypt rose to 53 on Monday, state media said, as calm returned to the streets after one of the bloodiest days since the military deposed Mursi.

SECURITY FORCES TAKE CONTROL
Traffic flowed normally in central Cairo where thousands of Mursi supporters had battled security forces and army supporters on Sunday on the anniversary of the 1973 war with Israel.

independent