Egypt police arrest 'jihadist cell' planning attacks on Israelis

Egyptian police have arrested at least 23 men suspected of plotting attacks against Israeli visitors to Egypt, US ships in the Suez Canal, and of trying to join the 'jihad' in Darfur, Interior Ministry sources said Sunday.

The men were arrested in Mansoura, northeast of Cairo, two months ago. Authorities claim they are members of a new Islamic militant group.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, government sources said that Egypt's domestic intelligence service, State Security Investigations, had confiscated "a large amount" of explosives, including material similar to that used in the Qassam rockets Hamas has fired at Israel, in a raid earlier this month.

They said a State Security prosecutor has accused the group of 23 men of plotting attacks against the Nile delta shrine of Abu Hasira, a 19th century rabbi whose grave is a pilgrimage site for Jews.

The group was also accused of training with live ammunition at a desert camp near the Mediterranean town of Damietta, of trying to join the "jihad" in the Sudanese province of Darfur, of plotting attacks against US ships in the Suez Canal and against banks in Alexandria and Cairo.

Cairo's independent daily al-Masry al-Youm on Sunday called the group the first "armed jihadist" organization arrested in the country since Egypt's battle with Islamist militants in the 1990s.

The daily said the men were arrested "several weeks ago" and that they had confessed to following the ideas of Sayid Qutb, an Egyptian writer commonly identified as the modern father of Islamist political thought.