Tag: sinai
Sinai floods
From Reuters:
Egyptian police fired teargas and rubber bullets on Wednesday at around 1,000 protesters in Sinai who accused the government of neglecting them after flash floods damaged their homes, witnesses said.
A security source said the demonstrators threw stones at police and blocked the road leading to the southern resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh from Ras Sedr, in South Sinai.
Relations between the government and Sinai, where there is a large Bedouin population, are often strained. The Bedouins complain of economic marginalisation, police harassment and limited access to jobs in the tourism and petroleum sectors.
“The protesters cut off the road leading to Sharm el-Sheikh with small trucks and set fire to the trucks’ tyres protesting at the delay of rescue aid,” the security source said.
The witnesses said police and protesters were injured during the clashes.
Several people died and many more were injured in Sinai and Aswan during three days of unusually heavy rain.
Although few homes were totally destroyed in the Sinai peninsula, the witnesses said protesters complained the water reached 2 metres high and they had not received any help.
A bloody partnership: Israel and Egypt
One lights the sky with flares, while the other takes aim and shoots: Israel and Egypt are cooperating in hunting down the African refugees, Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition reports…
It also follows revelations that Israeli troops have heightened their cooperation with Egyptian counterparts at the border. According to a government response submitted recently to the Israeli supreme court, at one sector of the frontier, Israeli troops fire flares that illuminate sites where refugees and asylum seekers are crossing.
“Where the Israel Defense Force forces identify a group of infiltrators adjacent to the border, prior to their infiltration into Israeli territory, the forces prepare to prevent the infiltration by means of firing flares into the air in order to draw the attention of the Egyptian forces to the site.”
Israeli troops also use flares to “signal and notify their Egyptian counterparts of the beginning of a procedure of coordinated return of infiltrators,” the court submission said.
“Signaling by flares, at the beginning of the coordinated return procedure ensures the safety of the infiltrators when they are handed over to Egyptian forces, as well as the safety of our forces.”