Egypt police set fire to homes during raid

Egyptian security forces set fire to residential apartments during a raid on Monday morning in what activists say is the first incident of its kind.

Police raided Damietta, a small coastal town 200 kilometres east of Alexandria early on Monday morning, a suburb known for being a stronghold of anti-government sentiment.

Video footage circulating on social media – which could not be independently verified – showed flames leaping from the windows of a residential apartment block.

Security forces targeted the house of Maryam Turk, a 29-year-old who along with her younger sister is already serving a prison sentence for taking part in violent anti-government protests in Damietta.

Turk’s husband and two children were at home when the blaze started, witnesses told Al-Jazeera, and were rescued after the fire took hold.

Turk’s husband, Mohammed Adel Balboula, was not arrested during the raid – he later posted pictures of smoke billowing from the building’s windows on Facebook.

“You have already killed our loved ones – how could setting fire to our houses harm us?” he wrote.

Prominent activist Ammar Metawa said the houses of two other locals who are currently imprisoned for anti-government activity were also set alight.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry has not made a public statement regarding the raid, which comes during an apparent attempt to rein in the country’s unpopular police force.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi promised last month to introduce new laws to combat police brutality following mass protests after an officer shot dead a taxi driver in an unprovoked attack.