'Thirty-six of the prisoners died of suffocation and crowding after tear gas was used to stop their escape,' the ministry said. The country's interior ministry said the prisoners, who were being loaded into a vehicle to be taken to a prison on the outskirts of Cairo, had taken an officer hostage during an escape attempt and died after suffocating on tear gas.

Overnight, a prison break left nearly 40 people dead, as the head of the country's armed forces urged supporters of Mr Morsi to integrate themselves into the political process. The violence comes as Egypt wrestles with a deep political crisis and bloodshed that has left more than 830 people dead since last Wednesday following a wave of clashes between Islamist protesters and security forces. The army says it has killed nearly 70 'terrorists' in the region since July 3. The security situation in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders both Gaza and Israel, has deteriorated since 2011, when president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown.īut it has become significantly worse since the army ousted president Mohammed Morsi on July 3, with near daily attacks by militants targeting police and military installations.Ī tally suggests that at least 49 security officials have been killed in Sinai since July 5 - 28 police and 21 soldiers - not including those in this latest attack.Įgypt has deployed additional forces to Sinai, which is mostly desert and inhabited by Bedouin tribes that have been accused of co-operating with Islamist militants. The attack was the deadliest in the Sinai in years, exceeding the toll from an August 2012 attack on Egyptian soldiers that killed 16. It said at least three others were injured when the unknown militants fired on the police as they headed towards the town of Rafah on the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

The interior ministry confirmed the toll, describing the attack as the work of 'armed terrorist groups in north Sinai.' At least 25 Egyptian policemen are believed to have been killed after militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the buses on which they were travelling, medical and security sources have said.

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