Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that 600 “terrorists” were arrested across the country in April in a televised address late Tuesday. “These numbers reflect the efforts we exert and the magnitude of the challenges we face,” Sisi said, adding that 188 “terrorists” were arrested in Sinai in a month. He said 150 “terrorist” hotbeds were also destroyed in the peninsula. According to Sisi, over 80 percent of the tunnels in Sinai’s border town of Rafah have been destroyed. He declared the kilometer long buffer zone tunnel-free. Last year, the cabinet issued a decision to clear 1,000 meters of the border area with Gaza after discovering some tunnels in the Peninsula over 800 metres long. Current efforts undertaken to “dry up sources of terrorism” are not enough, the president said, adding that attempts to “renew the religious discourse” in Egypt are not “up to the current challenge”. Addressing corruption in state apparatuses in Egypt, Sisi said that “we are fighting” corruption on two axes, the first of which is the security and judicial. Meanwhile the second axis is “amending legislations that ease and correct the perfomance of [state] apparatuses.” According to…
