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Egyptian police officer killed in Kerdasah Egyptian police storm second Islamist stronghold
(about 4 hours later)
An Egyptian police officer has been shot dead during a security operation on the outskirts of Cairo aimed at reasserting control over an area where gunmen killed 11 police last month, state media reported. Egyptian police have stormed a town on the edge of Cairo, the second Islamist stronghold to be retaken by Egyptian authorities in a week.
Earlier on Thursday police had fired tear gas and exchanged fire with gunmen in the area of Kerdasah, state TV reported. A senior police officer was killed in the clashes between armed groups in Kerdasa and security forces backed by tanks and helicopters early on Thursday, state media reported.
Kerdasah police station was abandoned after it was hit by rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire on 14 August the same day security forces moved against protests by supporters of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, killing hundreds. Situated on Cairo's western fringes, Kerdasa was one of several Egyptian towns overrun by Islamist hardliners on 14 August, as supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi took revenge on police after the massacre by security forces of around 1,000 pro-Morsi demonstrators in Cairo earlier that day.
At least 1,000 people have died in the violence between Morsi's supporters and security forces, with most deaths coming during the dispersal of two pro-Morsi sit-ins on 14 August. About 100 police officers also died in the clashes. Kerdasa experienced some of the worst revenge attacks, in which the local police station was stormed, and 11 officers killed and mutilated. Mobile phone footage apparently taken by bystanders appeared to show one of the murdered officers stripped to his underwear, and others with their throats cut.
Kerdasah, 9 miles (15km) from Cairo, is known to be an Islamist stronghold. Residents of the area said on Wednesday they were not in control of the area but did not want police there. Thursday's police assault on the town marks an attempt to reimpose order and round up some of the perpetrators. It also follows Monday's retaking of Delga, a central Egyptian town that had been under Islamist control since 3 July, and where the local Christian minority had been subjected to a campaign of terror.
"We don't trust them as we know they will come to arrest people we know and respect whom they blame on the violence that we know was done by outsiders, not by our respectable sheikhs," Ahmed Aly, a resident, told Reuters on Wednesday. The Egyptian army is already fighting an extremist insurgency in the eastern Sinai peninsula, and some officials have painted this week's assaults as an attempt to ward off the possibility of similar problems on the Egyptian mainland.
Egyptian security forces had last Monday stormed the town of Delga in Minya province, about 185 miles south of Cairo, clearing barricades set up by Morsi supporters who were almost in control of the town. Forces arrested 56 residents. In recent weeks, terrorists unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Egypt's interior minister in a bomb attack that injured more than 20 people. Security officials also claim to have thwarted several other bomb threats across the country.
On Thursday, parts of Cairo's subway system were shut down after police said they had discovered a bomb on a line in the north-east of the capital.
In return, some Morsi supporters have condemned the anti-state violence, while others claim it is exaggerated – or at the very least provoked by the new government's brutal crackdown on pro-Morsi demonstrators in Cairo. In Delga, local Islamists claimed the violence was carried out by apolitical criminals, and that the arrests of more than 50 Islamists following the re-taking of the town were made arbitrarily, without proper evidence.
Morsi's ousting at the hands of the army on 3 July, and the subsequent crackdown on his supporters, has broad support across Egypt. But he is still backed by a significant minority of the population, particularly outside Cairo, while a small bloc of activists have voiced their opposition to both the army and the Muslim Brotherhood.
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