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Thousands of police are deployed throughout the Egyptian capital in expectancy of demostration to object the government’s choice to give up control of 2 critical Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.
Riot police backed by armoured vehicles were deployed Monday at Cairo’s Tahrir square, the epicentre of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, as well as on the city’s ring road, downtown and at a suburban square where at least 600 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed by security forces in 2013.
Egypt says the islands belong to Saudi Arabia, which placed them under Cairo’s protection in 1950 because it feared Israel might attack them.
April 25 is a national holiday in Egypt to mark the completion of Israel’s pull-out from Sinai, which it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
