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Monday 18 August 2014 - 12:41

Gunmen attack police officers in northern Egypt

Story Code : 405398
People stand next to a police car that was targeted by unknown assailants in the Egyptian city of Mansura, north of Cairo, March 3, 2014.
People stand next to a police car that was targeted by unknown assailants in the Egyptian city of Mansura, north of Cairo, March 3, 2014.
The attack was carried out in the Nile Delta on Monday when the gunmen in a parked car opened fire on the patrolling officers.
 
A security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the incident, saying the assailants escaped the scene of the attack.
 
Since the ouster of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on July 3 last year, gunmen have launched almost daily attacks on security forces. Attacks initially centered on the desert peninsula of Sinai but have spread to the Nile Delta region and to Cairo.
 
The government says around 500, almost all of them police forces and soldiers, have been killed in the attacks.
 
Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, was toppled in a military coup led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s current president and the then army commander.
 
Sisi is accused of leading the suppression of Muslim Brotherhood supporters as hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over the last year.
 
Rights groups say the army’s crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has left over 1,400 people dead and 22,000 arrested, while some 200 people have been sentenced to death in mass trials.
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