19 August 2013
Last updated at 04:24 ET
At least 24 Egyptian policemen have been killed in an ambush attack in the Sinai peninsula, say reports.
Medical sources and officials said the police were in two buses which came under attack from armed men close to the town of Rafah on the Gaza border.
Three policemen were also reported to have been injured in the blast.
The military recently intensified a crackdown against militants in Sinai, where attacks have surged since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Egyptian deployments in Sinai are subject to the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
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Analysis
The northern Sinai has become one of the most dangerous places in Egypt since 2011.
The area is a crossroads for local Bedouin smuggling and criminal gangs, Egyptian jihadists and militants with links to the adjacent Gaza strip. Kidnapping, the smuggling of guns and explosives, and attacks on Egypt’s security forces have proliferated since the end of President Mubarak’s military rule in 2011.
The Sinai Peninsula, scene of heavy fighting in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, is host to an international observer force of soldiers deployed to keep the peace since the 1979 peace treaty with Israel but they have neither the mandate nor the capacity to stop the Sinai descending into lawlessness.
So far, the tourist resort of Sharm El Sheikh [at the southern tip of the Sinai] has remained immune to the post-Arab Spring violence.
In Monday’s incident, the Associated Press quoted security sources as saying four armed men had stopped the police buses and forced the passengers to get out before shooting them.
But other reports spoke of rocket-propelled grenades being fired at the buses.
EU concern
Egypt’s interim leaders have declared a state of emergency amid the nationwide unrest which has followed the ousting on 3 July of Islamist Mohammed Morsi as president.
A night-time curfew is in place in several provinces and in the capital, Cairo.
More than 830 people, including 70 police and soldiers, are reported to have been killed since Wednesday, when the army cleared protest camps set up by Mr Morsi’s supporters, including member of the Muslim Brotherhood movement which the former leader comes from.
On Sunday night, 36 Islamists died as they were being transported to a prison outside Cairo.
Government and military officials said they had suffocated in the back of a prison van from the effects of tear gas, fired when the prisoners rioted.
But there were other reports of gunfire. The Brotherhood described the incident as “cold-blooded killing”.
European Union ambassadors are meeting in Brussels to discuss the continuing crisis.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy have said the EU “will urgently review in the coming days its relations with Egypt”.
In a joint statement on Sunday, they expressed regret that international efforts to find a peaceful way forward in Egypt were abandoned and a “course of confrontation” instead pursued.
“The calls for democracy and fundamental freedoms from the Egyptian population cannot be disregarded, much less washed away in blood,” they said.
Mr Morsi’s supporters say the removal of Egypt’s first freely elected president was a coup.
However, the interim government says the Muslim Brotherhood has carried out a campaign of terror since he was overthrown.
The head of the armed forces, Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, has warned the military will not tolerate unrest.
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Egypt police killed in Sinai ambush
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