Egyptian security forces and militants exchanged fire as police stormed a town near Cairo dominated by Islamist supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi yesterday, arresting dozens in an operation to reimpose state control.
A police general was shot dead and at least nine policemen and soldiers were wounded by a hand grenade in the clashes in Kerdasa, on the capital’s western outskirts.
Dozens of police and army vehicles entered the town at daybreak in the second such raid this week to reassert government control over areas where Islamist sympathies run deep and hostility to the authorities has grown since the army overthrew and imprisoned Morsi on July 3.
There had been little or no sign of the security forces in Kerdasa since 11 police officers were killed in an attack on its main police station on August 14.
The building was hit with rocket-propelled grenades and burned down after police had stormed pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo that day and killed hundreds of his supporters.
“The security forces will not retreat until Kerdasa is cleansed of all terrorist and criminal nests,” Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif said.
Special forces stormed a villa belonging to a man they said financed the police station attack, a Reuters witness said. The police used armoured vehicles to smash down the villa’s gates before breaking in the door. But the man, whom they said was a member of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, was not there.
State news agency Mena said 65 people had been arrested so far. Dozens of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, were seized. A police officer said they had arrest warrants for 150 men in Kerdasa for suspected involvement in the attacks on the police station and a church in the area.
Members of the security forces in body armour and armed with automatic rifles fanned out through the town. Army checkpoints were set up on the roads into Kerdasa. Masked men set fire to tyres to try and obstruct the operation.
Heavy gunfire was heard in the nearby village of Nahya as police chased a group of men into side streets, TV footage showed. Two detained men were shown cowering in a van weeping as policemen stood by, and a bearded man with his hands raised was led out of a building by police.