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Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Sinai Bedouin block road over house demolitions

ISMAILIA, Egypt, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Sinai Bedouin blocked the road north from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh with burning tyres on Tuesday in protest at the demolition of 20 houses, police and Bedouin sources said.

Police earlier fired about 20 teargas canisters at Bedouin families who refused to evacuate their houses, which the authorities say were built without licences, they added.

Ali Salman, one of the protesters, told Reuters that a large number of police arrived with bulldozers in the morning to carry out the demolition order, part of a longstanding conflict between the Sinai Bedouin and the Egyptian authorities.

The police sources said the protesters also damaged one vehicle which tried to pass along the road north to the resort of Dahab on the Gulf of Aqaba.

They said a total of 1,500 unlicensed buildings were scheduled for demolition in the Sharm el-Sheikh area and not all of them belonged to Bedouin...


3 Comments

When the Egyptian Govt starts to demolish houses outside Egypt, like Israel does, there might be more media interest.

But don't hold your breath.

certain journalists and poloticians are only just waking up to the B.B.C and othe media outlets total one sided veiw of the goings on in the M.E. in the U.K.

Michael:

I'm not sure what your point is. The media are always in a rush to print anything linked to Israel so long as it casts Israel in a bad light right down to blaming Israel for the internecine violence between Fatah and Hamas.

I gather both countries have demolished illegally built homes, but I wonder how many of the houses the Egyptian government has had levelled concealed a network of weapons smuggling tunnels, like the one Rachel Corrie was trying to defend when she had her fatal accident falling down one of them. Ask anyone who recognizes her name and I'm sure you'll invariably be told she died after being deliberately crushed by an Israeli tank nothwithstanding the fact the inquest held after by the Israeli government found that the driver could not have seen her and that her body bore no such indication.

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