ALEXANDRIA: Egyptian police on Thursday arrested 64 members of the opposition party Akhwan-ul-Muslimeen for organising protests against the siege of the Gaza Strip.The arrests were made during dawn raids in the northern city of Alexandria, the Suez Canal town of Ismailya and other governorates in the Nile Delta, the website of Akhwan-ul-Muslimeen said. It was not immediately possible to confirm the number of arrests with security officials.Earlier this week, police arrested 28 Brothers "for membership of an illegal organisation and possession of banned literature," a security official said.The Muslim Brotherhood (Akhwan-ul-Muslimeen), which calls for an Islamic state in Egypt through peaceful means, is officially banned by the government but fields independent candidates in parliamentary and municipal elections.The movement won a fifth of seats in the 2005 parliamentary election, which observers said was marred by police intervention and fraud.Police have arrested dozens of the Islamists this year and also barred some of their leadership from travelling abroad.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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