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Egypt Arrests "Jihadist" Cell Plotting Attacks on Israeli Tourists
(DPA) Egyptian police have arrested 23 men suspected of plotting attacks against Israeli visitors to Egypt, U.S. ships in the Suez Canal, and of trying to join "the jihad in Darfur," Interior Ministry sources said Sunday. Egypt's domestic intelligence service, State Security Investigations, confiscated "a large amount" of explosives, including those used in the Kassam rockets Hamas has fired at Israel, in a raid in January. A State Security prosecutor has accused the group of plotting attacks against Israeli visitors to the Nile Delta grave of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira in the Egyptian city of Damanhur. 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.