Egypt's army announced a state of emergency in the provinces of South Sinai and Suez on Friday after Islamist gunmen attacked an airport in the Sinai town of El Arish, state newspaper Al-Ahram reported.
The report quoted the commander of the Third Field Army Osama Asakar saying that the "state of readiness" had been raised to its highest level in the two provinces due to the attack.
The attack, the latest of a string of security incidents in the lawless region, came two days after the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. It was not clear if the attacks were coordinated and in reaction to his removal.
In the Friday attack, the security sources said a soldier was killed and two were wounded when a police station in Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip came under rocket fire. The police post is close to the local headquarters of military intelligence.
Earlier, attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at army checkpoints guarding El-Arish airport, close to the border with the Gaza Strip and Israel, in the latest of a string of security incidents in the lawless region, the sources said.
A military helicopter fired a missile at one of the vehicles trying to attack the airport, Israel Radio reported. No casualties were reported as a result of the missile attack.
Islamist militants believed to have links to al-Qaida have established a foothold in the sparsely populated desert peninsula, sometimes in league with local Beduin smugglers and with Palestinian terrorists from Gaza.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood called for a wave of protests Friday, furious over the military’s ouster of its president and arrest of its revered leader and other top figures, underlining the touchy issue of what role the fundamentalist Islamist movement might play in the new regime.
There are concerns of Islamist violence in retaliation for Mohammed Morsi’s ouster, and some former militant extremists have vowed to fight.
At the Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo’s Nasser City, where one of the main rallies will take place, the army beefed up its presence throughout the morning, The Guardian reported. A large line of armored vehicles was stationed nearby and roads in the area, which are expected to see some 10,000 protesters, were blocked off.
Violence, possibly linked to the ouster, already broke out before dawn in the northern Sinai, where suspected Islamic militants opened fire at four sites, targeting two military checkpoints, a police station and el-Arish airport.
The military and security responded to the attacks, and one soldier was killed and three were wounded, according to security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
The question of the role of the Brotherhood has long been at the heart of democracy efforts in Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak, ousted in 2011, and previous authoritarian regimes banned the group. After Mubarak’s fall, the newly legalized group vaulted to power in elections, and its veteran member Morsi become the country’s first freely elected president.
Now the group is reeling under a huge backlash from a public that says the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies abused their electoral mandate. The military forced Morsi out Wednesday after millions of Egyptians turned out in four days of protests.
A government minister from a nationalist religious party called Thursday for the Jewish Temple to be rebuilt on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
The statement from Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) breaks a long-standing taboo on high-ranking government officials speaking about changing the fragile status quo on the holy and contested esplanade, and will likely draw ire from official Israeli circles and anger the Arab and Muslim world.
Speaking at an archaeological conference next to the West Bank settlement of Shilo and quoted by Maariv, Ariel called for a third Temple to be built on the site, which today is home to the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque and is considered Judaism’s holiest site and Islam’s third holiest.
“We’ve built many little, little temples,” Ariel said, referring to synagogues, “but we need to build a real Temple on the Temple Mount.”
The Jerusalem site was home to Judaism’s first and second Temples, both of which were destroyed, the second one in 70 CE. The idea of building a third Temple, while popular among some religious and right-wing Jews, is considered outside mainstream Israeli discourse by most.
Last year, Jewish Home MK Zevulun Orlev also called for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, saying that removing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque would mean that the “billion-strong Muslim world would surely launch a world war.” However, he added, “everything political is temporary and there is no stability.”
Jews are currently banned from praying on the Temple Mount by the Jordanian department of endowments, known as the Wakf, which administers the plaza surrounding the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
Sadly, the truth is that the United States is beginning to fully embrace a "police state" culture. We have learned that the government monitors and keeps a record of all of our cell phone calls, emails, Internet searches, credit card transactions, and every piece of mail that we send. But most Americans don't seem to care. We are "encouraged" to report the "suspicious activity" of our neighbors to the authorities, we are told that having security thugs touch the private areas of our women and children at our airports is necessary "for our security", and 80,000 SWAT team raids are conducted each year in the United States. But the American people don't seem to care. America was once a great country, but now it is being turned into a giant prison, and only a small minority of the citizens are raising their voices in objection.
At this point, we have already given up so much privacy that we barely have any left.
For example, up until recently I actually believed that our mail was private. But now we have learned that the government is monitoring every piece of mail that the American people send. And according to the New York Times, the government has flagged the mail of thousands of problem citizens for special attention...
The tyrants of the past never dreamed of having some of the technologies that we have today. Virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked or recorded in some way.
And as technology continues to advance, there will be very little that the authorities will not be capable of.
But this is what America is turning into. We are turning into a society that is absolutely obsessed with security and control, and this is manifesting in hundreds upon hundreds of different ways. If you doubt this, just check out the following articles...
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