Sinai Peninsula

Egypt is building a wall and is leveling land near its border with the Gaza Strip ahead of a planned Israeli offensive targeting the border city of Rafah, satellite images analyzed on Feb. 16 by The Associated Press show.

It was hidden behind a medieval parchment from the Monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai

Turkey condemned the attack on a water pumping station east of the Suez Canal in Egypt on May 7, killing 11 soldiers and injuring five.

In a written statement on May 8, the Foreign Ministry extended its condolences to the families of people who lost their lives and the Egyptian state and wished a speedy recovery to those injured.

An Egyptian court has sentenced 37 people to death convicted of terrorism today, Reuters reported.

One of them is a former officer of the Egyptian security force named Hisham al-Ashmawy, who was captured in the Libyan city of Derna at the end of 2018. He was transferred last May to Egyptian authorities by Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar.

At St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Egypt's Mount Sinai, the silence in the library is broken only by low electrical humming, as an early manuscript is bathed in green light.

Egyptian police killed 40 alleged "terrorists" in a crackdown on Saturday after a roadside bomb hit a tour bus claiming the lives of three Vietnamese holidaymakers and an Egyptian guide.

Egyptian police killed 40 "terrorists" in separate raids early Saturday, a day after a roadside bomb near the Giza pyramids killed three Vietnamese tourists and their guide, the interior ministry said, reports AFP. 

Two raids in the Giza governorate killed 30 "terrorists", while the remaining 10 were killed in the restive North Sinai, the ministry said in a statement.

Russia and Egypt are to resume direct flights on April 11 following a more than two-year hiatus after a bomb downed a Russian charter over the Sinai peninsula in 2015.

Two French military helicopters belonging to an army flight training school crashed in the southeastern Var region on Friday, causing deaths, the local prefecture said.

A security source and an official from the local authority said five people were killed in the accident.

There were no immediate details on what caused the crash, according to Reuters. 

Egypt has reopened an ancient library which holds thousands of centuries-old religious and historical manuscripts at the famed St. Catherine Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in South Sinai.