13 Muslim Brotherhood members arrested over Suez bomb plot

Thirteen members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been arrested on suspicion of placing bombs around the Suez Canal.

Security sources on Monday said the men had formed a 13-member cell that included an employee at the Suez Canal Authority.

The men were ordered to be detained for 15 days by prosecutors who claimed they had planted bombs in the sanitation and electricity facilities as well as on the beaches.

The Suez Canal is one of the region’s most important shipping routes - damage to the canal could cause enormous economic damage to Egypt.

Since the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohamed Morsi in June 2013, the Brotherhood have been designated a “terrorist” organisation in Egypt and hundreds have been imprisoned and killed.

An insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula, launched following the coup by a now Islamic State-affiliated militant group, Wilayet Sinai, has destabilised Egypt and led to crackdowns on civil liberties.

The killing of Egypt’s top prosecutor Hisham Barakat last week has also increased fears about instability in the country.

Since the assassination of Egypt’s prosecutor general on 29 June and following attacks carried out by affiliates of IS against Egyptian army positions in Sinai that killed at least 17 soldiers and 38 militants, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has pledged to toughen up laws against militants.

"The arm of justice is chained by the law. We're not going to wait for this. We're going to amend the law to allow us to implement justice as soon as possible," Sisi stated in a televised speech, surrounded by Barakat's mourning relatives.

"Do courts in these circumstances work? Do these laws work? They work with normal people.”