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Egypt's Regime Quick to Blame Muslim Brotherhood for Another Attack

Insurgents attacked an army bus in Cairo on Thursday, killing one officer. Within hours, the government accused the Muslim Brotherhood.
Photo via Flickr/RamyRaoof

Islamist insurgency against Egypt’s military regime is steadily intensifying. Masked gunmen attacked an Egyptian army bus in the Amiriya neighborhood of Cairo on Thursday, killing one officer and injuring three.

Three years after the January 2011 uprising, explosions, shootings and attacks on military targets are now happening at least once a week. Within hours of this attack, an army spokesman blamed the banned Muslim Brotherhood for the incident.

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"Masked armed men belonging to the terrorist Brotherhood targeted a bus of the armed forces… which led to the martyrdom of the Officer Yusri Mahmoud Mohamed Hassan," Ahmed Mohammed Ali said in a statement on Facebook.

Yet no group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far and experts have warned not to jump to conclusions.

“The army spokesman did not provide evidence to back his claim,” David Barnett, research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a specialist in Sinai jihadists, told VICE News. “Who exactly was responsible remains to be seen.”

The Egyptian army has focused its counterterrorism strategy on the Muslim Brotherhood, which was designated a terrorist organization after an attack on Mansoura police station that killed 16 people on December 24. Ansar Beyt al Maqdis, an increasingly active and militant Sinai jihadist group, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Last week, Saudi Arabia joined Egypt in declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group in a regional push to eradicate them from public life.

However, the Brotherhood condemned Thursday’s attack. “The targeting of Egyptian army soldiers and civilians is a heinous crime that requires a thorough and transparent investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice,” the group said in a statement issued from its London office. “Instead, the military regime always rush, for political reasons, to implicate the Muslim Brotherhood without a shred of evidence and before any investigation is launched.”

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As well as the Mansoura attack, al Maqdis has also claimed responsibility for a number of other high-profile bombings and assassinations, including an attempt on the life of Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim last September.

Al Maqdis has also increased a tactic of informational warfare against the military in recent weeks. On Wednesday, it released a video on jihadist forums showing the impact of the army’s counterterrorism crackdown on residents of the Sinai peninsula.

The group claimed that military forces were responsible for "demolishing and burning mosques, houses, and cars, and looting money and properties” in the operation, according to a translation by SITE Intelligence Group.

Egypt’s army and government maintain their counterterrorism strategy is working. The Ministry of Interior posts daily videos of militants’ arrests on YouTube, as well as detailing how it is catching and bringing terrorists to justice.

Human rights activists say abuses and violations have increased as the military has stepped up its crackdown on Islamists, however, and arrest numbers have swelled across Egypt in recent months.

“This is the worst moment in Egypt in the last 40 years,” Mohamed Zaree, program manager at Cairo Institute for Human Rights, told VICE News. “Anything could happen, anything could be justified legally.”

Photo via Ramy Raoof