Egyptian police kill three Bedouin as violence mounts
11 Nov 2008 18:46:17 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds more Bedouin deaths, details, background) By Yusri Mohamed and Asmaa Waguih ISMAILIA/RAFAH, Egypt, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Egyptian police shot dead three Bedouin during a protest while tribesmen briefly kidnapped a group of policemen on Tuesday in escalating tension in the Sinai peninsula, security sources said. The violence, the most serious in months between Bedouin tribesmen and police, started overnight on Monday after police fired on a Bedouin vehicle that ignored orders to stop, killing one man and wounding another. Police later shot dead three other Bedouin protesting the killing in a southern Sinai town, security sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Egypt has blamed a series of attacks on Sinai tourist targets between 2004 and 2006 on a group of Bedouin with militant Islamist views. Bedouins resent the mistrust and complain of police harassment. Bedouin retaliated for Monday's shooting by briefly kidnapping 25 policemen and storming a police post near Egypt's border with Israel. Security sources said armed Bedouins had stopped a vehicle full of police reinforcements heading to the police post. The gunmen forced the police from their vehicle and whisked them away but later freed them in a mountainous area, the sources said, giving no further details. Security and Bedouin sources said that earlier on Tuesday, Egyptian Bedouin protesters besieged a police post near the border. A Reuters photographer at the scene said Bedouin had looted the post and set several fires. Egyptian state news agency MENA said the Bedouin man killed on Monday, sparking the violence, was a drug dealer. Bedouin sources denied that. Northern Sinai is home to about 200,000 formerly nomadic Bedouin. It is one of Egypt's poorest areas with high unemployment levels. Bedouin say they are shut out of jobs in the lucrative tourism and petroleum sectors in Sinai, which produces a significant share of Egypt's oil from offshore fields and is dotted with resorts popular with tourists. Jobs at the few privately owned factories in the region and senior posts in state institutions usually are reserved for workers from the Nile Valley, as part of a policy to increase the population of Sinai and integrate it with the rest of the country, analysts and human rights groups say. (Writing by Will Rasmussen; Editing by Michael Roddy)
A child holds a photograph of his father who died during the 2006 war with Israel, during a rally marking Hezbollah's Martyrs Day in Beirut's suburbs November 11, 2008. REUTERS/ Mohamed ...
