24 dead as Islamist protests hit Egypt cities

SINAI ATTACKS

In the Sinai peninsula bordering Israel, where Egypt has struggled to control security since Mubarak was toppled, five police officers were gunned down in separate attacks in the town of El Arish, medical sources said.

Hardline Islamist groups have exploited a collapse in state authority after the uprising to launch attacks into Israel and on Egyptian targets.

A portrait of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is seen near a Republican Guard building in Cairo July 5, 2013.  [Photo/Agencies]

The violence will ring alarm bells in the United States. Washington has so far avoided referring to the army's removal of Morsi as a "coup", a word that under U.S. law would require a halt to its $1.5 billion in annual aid.

Morsi's opponents also say it was not a coup but an intervention to impose the "people's will".

The Brotherhood's key political strategist, Khairat El-Shater, became the latest senior figure to be arrested since Morsi's removal.

A legal technicality forced Shater's withdrawal from the presidential campaign last year, promoting Morsi into being the movement's candidate.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the movement was faced with a crackdown from a state establishment unreformed from the days of Mubarak: "It's the old police state of Mubarak with every ingredient and nightmare that it had before the January 25 revolution. It's as if we hit the reset button."

But many Egyptians saw the military as a guarantor of stability at a dangerous time for the largest Arab nation of 84 million people.

"Maybe they will need to issue a curfew. Maybe the trouble will last a few days," said Said Asr, 41, sitting with friends outside a Cairo cafe smoking a cigarette. "But the army is everything in this country. And they are taking control."