Picture taken on July 16, 2013 shows Egyptian soldiers praying in the northern Sinai town of Al-Arish/AFP
CAIRO, Aug 19 – Militants killed 25 policemen on Monday in the deadliest attack of its kind in years, as Egypt’s army installed rulers escalated a campaign to crush ousted president Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.
The assailants fired rocket propelled grenades at two buses carrying police in the Sinai Peninsula, sources said, just hours after 37 Brotherhood prisoners died in police custody.
The incidents came after Egypt’s military chief vowed a “forceful” response to violence roiling the Arab world’s most populous nation.
The Sinai attack raised fears of a return to the wave of deadly Islamist violence that swept the country in the 1990s.
Egypt is struggling to put a lid on a deep political crisis and violence that has killed almost 800 people in several days of clashes between Islamist protesters and security forces across the country.
Western countries have condemned the violence and are threatening to cut off billions of dollars in aid to Egypt in response, but Saudi Arabia said on Monday that Arab nations are ready to step in to fill the financial void.
The developments came as judicial sources said former autocratic president Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in a popular uprising in 2011, was granted conditional release in one case against him, but that he would remain in custody in an additional case.
Morsi loyalists vowed new demonstrations on Monday, although a day earlier they had cancelled some marches citing security concerns.
The interior ministry said 25 policeman were killed and two injured in the Sinai attack, which it on “armed terrorist groups.”
A border official said afterwards that the Rafah crossing with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, near where the attack occurred, would be closed.
Security sources said another policemen was killed in the northern city of El-Arish, bringing to at least 75 the number of security force members killed in the Sinai since the army deposed Morsi on July 3.
The security situation in the Sinai has deteriorated sharply in the past weeks, with near daily attacks by militants targeting police and military installations.
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