Suspected Muslim Militants Slain by Egyptian Police

Egyptian police Sunday shot and killed five suspected Muslim militants in a town on the outskirts of Cairo, the Interior Ministry said.

It said the five were “terrorist elements,” the term the ministry routinely uses to refer to members of the Gamaa al Islamiya (Islamic Group), the biggest organization of Muslim militants fighting to topple President Hosni Mubarak’s government and replace it with a strict Islamic state.

The ministry statement said police were about to arrest the men in a house in the October 6 satellite city near Cairo when the militants opened fire. Police returned fire and killed the five men, it said. There were no police casualties.

It said the five men had plans to take to Cairo the violent campaign launched by their comrades in the southern province of Minya where Gamaa members killed eight policemen last week in a ruthless, execution-style attack.

Twelve people were killed by militants in Minya in the first two days of 1995, bringing to nearly 700 the number of people killed in Egypt’s political violence since 1992.

Cairo has repeatedly accused neighboring Sudan of providing training camps for Egyptian and other Muslim militants but has never publicly shown proof of the charges, which Khartoum denies.