CAIRO - Egyptian security forces have arrested 26 suspected Al-Qaeda loyalists on charges of plotting attacks on foreign ships passing through the Suez Canal, the interior ministry said on Thursday.
The suspects, 25 Egyptians and a Palestinian, were in contact with the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Army of Palestine, the ministry said in a statement.
It alleged that they had prepared remote controlled detonators and explosives fabricated from armaments left over in the Sinai desert from Egypt's wars with Israel.
The cell was waiting for instructions from abroad from an Al-Qaeda operative, the statement said.
It also charged that the cell carried out a deadly armed robbery of a Coptic Christian owned jewellery shop in Cairo in May 2008 in which the owner and four workers were killed. The gun used in the attack had also been found.
Five suspects "gave detailed confessions on carrying out (the attack)... to fund their activities," it said.
In May, the interior ministry said it had arrested seven members of another alleged Al-Qaeda-affiliated cell over a Cairo bazaar bombing that killed a teenage French tourist.
That cell called itself the Islamic Army of Palestine and was led by two Egyptians living abroad, one of them reportedly in Gaza.
A month before, the public prosecutor said that 49 people had been charged with forming a Hezbollah cell suspected of planning attacks against tourist resorts and ships passing through the Suez Canal.
Twenty-five of those suspects were arrested with the others being on the run.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite militant group, said one of those arrested was a Hezbollah agent but insisted he had been involved in weapons smuggling to Gaza rather than plotting attacks in Egypt.
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