Egyptian authorities accused the Lebanese group Hezbollah on Wednesday of planning attacks inside Egypt, a development that could plunge Cairo’s relations with the Shiite group’s backer, Iran, to new lows.
The office of Egypt’s public prosecutor said it was investigating accusations that Hezbollah had recruited a 49-member cell with the aim of striking inside Egypt, a key US ally in the Middle East.
Hezbollah angered Egypt earlier this year by accusing Cairo of complicity with Israel in its siege of the Gaza Strip.
“The public prosecutor received a note from state security about information, confirmed by questioning, about Hezbollah leaders sending some elements to the country to attract members to work with the organization ... with the aim of carrying out acts of aggression inside the country,” a statement by the public prosecutor said.
The statement said the group had been trying to monitor Egypt’s Suez Canal, its border with the Gaza Strip and tourist installations in the Sinai Peninsula and was sending information back to Hezbollah.
It also said the group had been establishing links with criminal elements to forge passports and setting up businesses to cover for spying activities.
It gave no details of any attacks being planned, but accused Hezbollah of trying to spread Shiite ideology in Egypt.
A lawyer for Hezbollah said on Tuesday that about 50 men, including Egyptians, Palestinians and Lebanese, had been brought in for questioning on Saturday on suspicion of helping Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian government is worried that public support for Hamas may boost the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has ideological and historical ties with the Palestinian group and is the strongest opposition group in Egypt.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are supported by Iran, whose growing influence in the region has alarmed conservative Arab states, including many in the oil-exporting Gulf region.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called in December for the Egyptian people and armed forces to compel their leaders to open Egypt’s border with Gaza to lift the Israeli-imposed siege on the coastal strip.
Egypt said Nasrallah’s call was an appeal for mutiny and accused Nasrallah of insulting the Egyptian people.
“This will add some fuel to the Egyptian-Iranian political confrontation,” said Abdel-Monem Said, director of the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “If there is firm evidence, the people in the Gulf could take it seriously. If they [Hezbollah] try to branch into Egypt, that means the possibility in the much closer Gulf countries could be high.”
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS