Mohamed Badie, 70, was detained at an apartment in Nasr City in northeast Cairo, the state news agency reported.

“That was after information came to the security apparatus locating his place of hiding,” it said.

The Facebook page of the Interior Ministry was showing a picture of Badie, with dark rings under his eyes, sitting in a car between two men in black body armor, with a caption confirming his arrest.

“Carrying out the decisions of the public prosecutor to arrest and bring forward the general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Badie, and through collected information and observation of movements it was possible for the criminal search apparatus under the direction of Cairo’s security (services) to arrest him ,the caption said.

“The necessary legal measures are being taken,” it added.

Badie is the Brotherhood’s General Guide.

He was charged in July with inciting violence along with other Brotherhood officials. Together with his two deputies, he is due to stand trial on August 25.

Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told Al Masry Al Youm, a newspaper, that Badie had been arrested in the early hours of Tuesday.

CAIRO: Islamic militants on Monday ambushed two mini-buses carrying off-duty policemen in the northern region of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing 25 of them execution-style in a brazen daylight attack that deepens the turmoil roiling the country and underscores the volatility of the strategic region.

The killings, which took place near the border town of Rafah, came a day after 36 detainees were killed in clashes with security forces. In all, nearly 1,000 people have been killed in clashes between security forces and supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi since last Wednesday.

Tensions between the sides have been high since the army ousted Morsi in a July 3 coup, following days of protests by millions of Egyptians demanding the Islamist president leave and accusing him of abusing his powers.

But Morsi’s supporters have fought back, staging demonstrations demanding that he be reinstated and denouncing the military coup.

On Wednesday, the military raided two protest camps of Morsi’s supporters in Cairo, killing hundreds of people and triggering the current wave of violence.

Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the country’s military chief, said Sunday that the crackdown, followed by a state of emergency and a nighttime curfew imposed in Cairo and several other flashpoint provinces, is needed to protect the country from “civil war.” El-Sissi has vowed the military would stand firm in the face of the rising violence but also called for the inclusion of Islamists in the post-Morsi political process.

Sinai, a strategic region bordering the Gaza Strip and Israel, has been witnessing almost daily attacks since Morsi’s ouster — leading many to link the militants there to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Morsi hails.

Egyptian military and security forces have been engaged in a long-running battle against militants in the northern half of the peninsula.

Al-Qaida-linked fighters, some of whom consider Morsi’s Brotherhood to be too moderate, and tribesmen have used the area for smuggling and other criminal activity for years and have on occasion fired rockets into Israel and staged cross-border attacks. A year ago, 16 Egyptian border guards, a branch of the army, were slain in Sinai near the borders with Gaza and Israel in a yet unresolved attack that is widely blamed on militants.

In Monday’s attack, the militants forced the two vehicles to stop, ordered the policemen out and forced them to lie on the ground before shooting them, the officials said. The policemen were in civilian clothes, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which also left two policemen wounded.

CAIRO: Egyptian police are expected to start taking action early on Monday against supporters of ousted President Mohamed Mursi who are gathered in crowded protest camps in Cairo, security and government sources said, a move which could trigger more bloodshed.

The sites are the main flashpoints in the confrontation between the army, which toppled Mursi last month, and supporters who demand his reinstatement.

Western and Arab mediators and some senior Egyptian government officials have been trying to persuade the army to avoid using force against the protesters, who at times can number as much as tens of thousands.

“State security troops will be deployed around the sit-ins by dawn as a start of procedures that will eventually lead to a dispersal,” a senior security source said on Sunday, adding that the first step will be to surround the camps.

Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who toppled Mursi, has come under pressure from hardline military officers to move against the protesters, security sources say.

Almost 300 people have been killed in political violence since the overthrow, including dozens of Mursi supporters shot dead by security forces in two incidents.

ABU DHABI: Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters to abandon democracy and seek to govern through the full implementation of Islamic law.

In a 15-minute recording posted on Islamist websites on Saturday, Zawahri also criticized Islamists who had formed political parties in Egypt and supported the Egyptian military in ousting former Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi.

“I give this piece of advice to whoever supported Mursi and I tell them first we have to admit that legitimacy doesn’t lie in elections and democracy but it lies in Sharia,” Zawahri said.

“Sharia is not electing Mursi president of a republic, a president of a secular and nationalistic state,” he added.

The recording, posted two days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave his seal of approval to Egypt’s new leaders saying that they had restored democracy, also lashed out against U.S. policy and the Egyptian army.

“The crusaders, the secularists, the pro-U.S. army and former Mubarak supporters and a few of those who are linked to the Islamists have worked with Gulf money and U.S. planning to overthrow Mohamed Mursi’s government,” Zawahri said.

More than 300 people have been killed in Egypt since the army removed Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood from power on July 3 in response to mass protests against his rule.

The popular mood in Egypt had swung against the Brotherhood after Mursi was accused of trying to establish himself as a new dictator during his first year in office.

Pro-Mursi supporters have been staging two main sit-ins in Cairo since his ouster asking to bring him back to power.

“What has happened is the greatest evidence that taking democracy as a path to Islamic rule has failed,” Zawahri said.

CAIRO: The death toll from weekend clashes between supporters of Egypt’s ousted president and security forces backed by armed civilians in Cairo has risen to 72, the deadliest single outbreak of violence since the army deposed the Islamist Mohammed Morsi in a July 3 coup, a health ministry official said on Sunday.

Khaled el-Khateeb, head of the ministry’s emergency and intensive care department, said another eight died in clashes in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

A total of 792 people were wounded in both incidents, which spanned Friday and early Saturday.

The Cairo violence took place when pro-Morsi protesters sought to expand their sit-in camp by moving onto a nearby main boulevard, only to be confronted by police and armed civilians.

Authorities concede that the vast majority of the dead in Cairo were demonstrators, but the Interior Ministry says some policemen were wounded and it is not clear if civilians who sided with police were among the dead.

The extent of the bloodshed pointed to a rapidly building confrontation between the country’s two camps, sharply divided over the coup that removed Egypt’s first freely elected president following protests by millions of Egyptians demanding he step down.

Authorities talk more boldly of making a move to end weeks of protests by Morsi’s Islamist supporters. At the same time, the Islamists are growing more assertive in challenging security forces as they try to win public backing for their cause.

Officials from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and their allies decried what they called a new “massacre” against their side, only weeks after July 8 clashes with army troops in Cairo that left more than 50 Morsi supporters dead.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that he spoke to Egyptian authorities, saying it is “essential” they respect the right to peaceful protest. He called on all sides to enter a “meaningful political dialogue” to “help their country take a step back from the brink.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also asked security forces to “act with full respect for human rights” and demonstrators to “exercise restraint.”

Brotherhood supporters will take to the streets on Friday in their campaign to reverse the military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely-elected president, but the movement also gave a first sign of willingness to negotiate with its opponents.

Mansour pledged in his first public address since he was sworn in on July 4 to restore stability and security.

“We are going through a critical stage and some want us to move towards chaos and we want to move towards stability. Some want a bloody path,” he said in a televised address. “We will fight a battle for security until the end.”

Supporters of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi

The rallies aim to show that Mursi’s supporters are not ready to accept the new military-backed government. However, a Brotherhood official also told Reuters on Thursday that the movement had proposed a framework for talks mediated by the EU.

Sworn into office on Tuesday, the cabinet of interim premier Hazem el-Beblawy busied itself with tackling Egypt’s many crises, buying foreign wheat to replenish stocks and banking $3 billion in badly needed aid from the United Arab Emirates.

Still stunned by the July 3 toppling of Mursi, his Muslim Brotherhood, and allies grouped in what it calls the National Alliance for Legitimacy, urged the nationwide rallies on Friday, predicting millions would take to the streets.

“To every free Egyptian man and woman: Come out against the bloody military coup,” the alliance said in a statement.

Brotherhood official Gehad el-Haddad, who represented the movement in previous EU-facilitated talks with other political groups, told Reuters that the organization would not retreat from its demand for the reinstatement of Mursi.

CAIRO: The head of Egypt’s military, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, sat with a polite smile in the front row listening to President Mohammed Morsi give a 2 1/2-hour speech defending his year in office. El-Sissi even clapped lightly as the audience of Morsi supporters broke into cheers.

It was a calculating display of cool by an army general plotting the overthrow of his commander in chief. Just over a week later, el-Sissi slid in the knife, announcing Morsi’s ouster on state TV on July 3 as troops took the Islamist leader into custody.

The move was the culmination of nearly a year of acrimonious relations between el-Sissi and Egypt’s first freely elected — and first civilian — president.

A series of interviews by The Associated Press with defense, security and intelligence officials paint a picture of a president who intended to flex his civilian authority as supreme commander of the armed forces, issuing orders to el-Sissi. In turn, the military chief believed Morsi was leading the country into turmoil and repeatedly challenged him, defying his orders in at least two cases.

The degree of their differences suggests that the military had been planning for months to take greater control of the political reins in Egypt. When an activist group named Tamarod began a campaign to oust Morsi, building up to protests by millions nationwide that began June 30, it appears to have provided a golden opportunity for el-Sissi to get rid of the president. The military helped Tamarod from early on, communicating with it through third parties, according to the officials.

The reason, the officials said, was because of profound policy differences with Morsi. El-Sissi saw him as dangerously mismanaging a wave of protests early in the year that saw dozens killed by security forces. More significantly, however, the military also worried that Morsi was giving a free hand to Islamic militants in the Sinai Peninsula, ordering el-Sissi to stop crackdowns on jihadis who had killed Egyptian soldiers and were escalating a campaign of violence.

“I don’t want Muslims to shed the blood of fellow Muslims,” Morsi told el-Sissi in ordering a halt to a planned offensive in November, retired army Gen. Sameh Seif el-Yazl told AP. Seif el-Yazl remains close to the military and sometimes appears with el-Sissi at public events.

And at root, the military establishment has historically had little tolerance for the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi’s Islamist group. The military leadership has long held the conviction that the group puts its regional Islamist ambitions above Egypt’s security interests.

Its alliances with Gaza’s Hamas rulers and other Islamist groups alarmed the military, which believed Gaza militants were involved in Sinai violence. The officials said the military leadership also believed the Brotherhood was trying to co-opt commanders to turn against el-Sissi.

The military has been the most powerful institution in Egypt since officers staged a 1952 coup that toppled the monarchy. Except for Morsi, the military has since given Egypt all of its presidents and maintained a powerful influence over policy. Having a civilian leader over the military was entirely new for the country.

The Brotherhood accuses el-Sissi of turning against them and carrying out a coup to wreck democracy. Since being deposed, Morsi is detained by the military at an undisclosed Defense Ministry facility.

The Brotherhood had believed that el-Sissi was sympathetic with their Islamist agenda. A senior Brotherhood official told AP that Morsi installed el-Sissi, then the head of military intelligence, as defense minister and head of the armed forces in August 2012 in part because he had been the contact man between the Brotherhood and the military junta that ruled Egypt for nearly 17 months after the February 2011 fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

CAIRO: Murad Mohamed Mahmoud, an Egyptian civil servant, was saving up to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Instead, he is using the money to allow his family to join a three week old vigil in Cairo for supporters of ousted President Mohamed Mursi.

Mahmoud, his 39 relatives and hundreds of other families from across the country have put their lives on hold to join the sit-in at the Rabaa Adawiya mosque. They say they will stay until Mursi is reinstalled.

“If my son wants to invite anyone, they are welcome,” says the 51-year-old, sitting cross-legged in the street between rows of tents used as shelter from the sun and as a place to sleep.

“This is hospitality, it’s Ramadan!”

Young boys play with toy swords. One youth sprays water on people from a bottle to cool them down. A teenage girl checks her emails on a pink laptop. Sometimes Rabaa feels like a giant summer camp. At others it seethes with anger.

The sight of thousands of people protesting on a normally busy Cairo crossroads, often swelling to tens of thousands in the evening when people return from work, has become a powerful symbol for Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement.

It is also an embarrassment for Egypt’s military, which ousted the Islamist president after millions of people took to the streets in another part of Cairo to demand his resignation.

Not everyone outside the Rabaa Adawiya mosque is there all the time. Many are bussed in from the provinces, where Brotherhood support is strong, for short stays. Some come for a few hours when they can. Many return after work every evening.

But there is also a core of several thousand who have defied searing heat during the day, and daylight hours with no food and drink during the fasting month of Ramadan, to make their point.

Mahmoud, his two wives and children take turns sleeping in the car parked nearby and a makeshift tent made of a wooden frame covered in throws brought from their Cairo home.

CAIRO: A promise of $12 billion in aid from wealthy Arab Gulf nations would give Egypt’s new military-backed leadership breathing room by paying for vital food and fuel imports. But the benefits would be only temporary, because Egypt’s broken economy remains unrepaired.

More than two years of political turmoil, violence and deterioration in security have frightened away tourists and foreign investors. Just as harmful, badly structured subsidies on food and fuel eat up almost a third of Egypt’s strained budget.

The most recent round of violence, when more than 50 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi died in clashes with the military on Monday, is likely to ripple through the economy, spreading doubts over the new leadership’s ability to provide stability.

A key demand among millions of people who demonstrated against Morsi was better living conditions. Little improved when he took office a year ago, after poverty, rampant corruption and crony capitalism propelled millions to join the youth-led uprising against President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Morsi inherited critical economic problems, and the economy deteriorated further under his one-year rule. The Egyptian currency lost more than 10 percent of its value against the dollar this year, unemployment rose to 13 percent and his government relied on handouts from sympathetic neighboring countries to survive.

This reinforced the impression that Morsi was incapable of governing, according to economic rights expert Amr Adly.

Now Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, longtime critics of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, are stepping up to back his replacements.

The $12 billion in aid, a mix of grants, cash deposits and oil and gas products, will likely be used by the incoming government to try to avert another gas and electricity shortage like the one just before Morsi’s ouster nearly two weeks ago.

On Wednesday, Kuwait announced its offer of $4 billion — a $2 billion cash deposit, a $1 billion grant and $1 billion worth of oil products.

A day before, the UAE announced its $3 billion aid package to Egypt, $1 billion of which is a grant and $2 billion of which is a no-interest loan.

Regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia weighed in with the largest aid package — $5 billion, made up of $2 billion to be deposited in Egypt’s central bank, $2 billion worth of oil and gas and $1 billion as a grant.

The $7 billion flowing directly into Egypt’s central bank is needed to keep foreign reserves from plunging further, after the bank warned they had already reached a “critical level.” Reserves stood at just $14.9 billion at the end of last month, less than half of what they were before the political upheaval that began in 2011.

The changes also mean that the tiny but influential Gulf state of Qatar has been sidelined after it showered Morsi’s government with around $8 billion in aid over the course of the past year. Qatar is a key backer of the Brotherhood in the region.

Ashraf Swelam, an economist and senior advisor to former presidential candidate Amr Moussa, warned that the billions of dollars in assistance may help Egypt stay afloat for only about six months. That’s when parliamentary elections are scheduled, according to a timetable drawn up by the interim president.

As many as 22 Al Jazeera employees have quit since the overthrow of Mohammad Mursi, amid concern over the channel’s alleged bias towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its coverage of Egypt.

Criticism over the channel’s editorial line, the way it covered events in Egypt, and allegations that journalists were instructed to favor the Brotherhood are said to be the main reasons behind the mass resignations.

As many as 22 Al Jazeera staff resigned on Monday, Gulf News reported, but other media said only seven had left the broadcaster.

Al Jazeera correspondent Haggag Salama resigned accusing the station of “airing lies and misleading viewers”, Gulf News reported. The newspaper also said that four Egyptian members of editorial staff at the network’s headquarters in Doha had resigned in protest.

Al Jazeera anchor Karem Mahmoud said he left because of the channel’s editorial line over recent events in Egypt.

“I felt that there were errors in the way the coverage was done, especially that now in Egypt we are going through a critical phase that requires a lot of auditing in terms of what gets broadcasted,” Mahmoud told Al Arabiya. “My colleagues have also resigned for the same reason.”

Mahmoud told Gulf News he left because of Al Jazeera’s “biased coverage”, but said that some local Egyptian stations were worse.

“I am not satisfied with the performance of local news channels in comparison to Al Jazeera due to their incompliance to neutrality,” he said. “Although I have left, I still carry a lot of respect for Al Jazeera and believe that they will remain one of the most respectful news channels.”

Al Jazeera today confirmed some staff had left its Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr operation, including some it said had “partisan political opinions”.

“Following the recent squeeze on media in Egypt, some Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr staff have decided to leave. We understand the reasons for some employees feeling they need to move on, including those with partisan political opinions,” the broadcaster said in a statement on its press website.

Some commentators have criticized Al Jazeera as favoring the Muslim Brotherhood in its coverage of events in Egypt.

Author and journalist Abdel Latif el-Menawy, who was head of the Egypt News Center under ex-president Hosni Mubarak, said that Al Jazeera was a “propaganda channel” for the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Al Jazeera turned itself into a channel for the Muslim Brotherhood group,” el-Menawy told Al Arabiya. “They are far away from being professional. When the Muslim Brotherhood collapsed, they continued to play the role.”

He said Al Jazeera gave undue prominence to certain events after Mursi was overthrown, including hours of airtime for “the Muslim Brotherhood to attack and make comments.”

El-Menawy said he “saluted” those journalists who left the channel.

“It’s a good thing to do, because they couldn’t accept what is going on,” he said. “People thought it was the voice of the revolution. And I think people were shocked to discover it was not.”

Al Jazeera fiercely denies allegations of bias in its coverage, saying that their journalists in Cairo had suffered from “intimidation” after Mursi was ousted.

Hours after the overthrow of Mursi by the Egyptian army, security forces raided the Cairo offices of Al Jazeera’s Egyptian TV channel. The broadcaster says “dozens” of its journalists have been detained by authorities.

An Al Jazeera spokesman said in the statement issued today said the channel had been “particularly targeted in an apparent crackdown on information.”

“Throughout our history we’ve had to cope with crackdowns. This unfortunately is nothing new. We will carry on doing our job regardless – upholding the highest standards of journalism, covering all angles of events in Egypt with balance and integrity.”