CAIRO: Supporters of Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced on Sunday that they have collected more than 12 million signatures from people urging him to run for a second four-year term, a mostly symbolic gesture as there is little doubt he will contest, and win, next year’s elections.
El-Sisi, elected in 2014, has yet to formally announce his candidacy.
He has said he will make his decision after gauging popular reaction to a “factsheet” of his achievements due to be publicized next month.
With his win in the 2018 vote an almost foregone conclusion, a large voter turnout would take on added significance, affirming El-Sisi’s candidacy as the people’s choice. His likely opponents — the list so far includes a prominent rights activist, a former prime minister and an opposition politician thrown out of parliament — are not expected to pose a serious challenge to him securing a second term.
Mohammed El-Garhy, the chief coordinator of the group that gathered the signatures, told a news conference on Sunday that “the supreme goal of our campaign is to safeguard the Egyptian state.”
He was alluding to the widespread conviction among El-Sisi’s supporters that his policies since 2013 have protected Egypt from the chaos and bloodshed seen in fellow Arab countries like Libya, Yemen or Syria.
The group has carried out a large-scale publicity campaign, with giant posters of the president looming over some of Cairo’s busiest roads.
The group is called “So You Can Build It (Egypt),” a play on the mega projects that El-Sisi has undertaken since assuming office.
These include the expansion of the Suez Canal, the construction of new cities, including a new administrative capital east of Cairo, a network of roads and low and middle-income housing projects.
The president has also introduced ambitious and politically risky economic reforms.
El-Sisi’s 3 1/2 years in office have also seen an uptick in terror attacks in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.
On Saturday, El-Sisi repeated his vow that his military would use its “full range of violence” against the militants.
“We must, with God’s help end terrorism there (in Sinai),” he said on Saturday in a ceremony marking the end of new tunnels under the Suez Canal to link mainland Egypt to Sinai.
Last month, terrorists in Sinai killed more than 300 worshippers praying at a mosque. The president later gave the army and police a three-month deadline to “restore” security and stability in Sinai.
On Sunday, the Interior Ministry said police staged a pre-dawn raid on a Nile delta farm used by militants as a hideout, killing nine of them when they returned fire.
Separately, it said police also busted a cell of Brotherhood-linked militants in Cairo, the capital, arresting nine and seizing arms, explosives and written material linking members of the cell to a July terrorist attack in the Greater Cairo area.
12 million want El-Sisi to run for second term, say supporters
12 million want El-Sisi to run for second term, say supporters
First responders enter devastated Aleppo neighborhood after days of deadly fighting
- The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army
ALEPPO, Syria: First responders on Sunday entered a contested neighborhood in Syria’ s northern city of Aleppo after days of deadly clashes between government forces and Kurdish-led forces. Syrian state media said the military was deployed in large numbers.
The clashes broke out Tuesday in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid after the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main Kurdish-led force in the country, failed to make progress on how to merge the SDF into the national army. Security forces captured Achrafieh and Bani Zaid.
The fighting between the two sides was the most intense since the fall of then-President Bashar Assad to insurgents in December 2024. At least 23 people were killed in five days of clashes and more than 140,000 were displaced amid shelling and drone strikes.
The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army. Some of the factions that make up the army, however, were previously Turkish-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish fighters have now evacuated from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood to northeastern Syria, which is under the control of the SDF. However, they said in a statement they will continue to fight now that the wounded and civilians have been evacuated, in what they called a “partial ceasefire.”
The neighborhood appeared calm Sunday. The United Nations said it was trying to dispatch more convoys to the neighborhoods with food, fuel, blankets and other urgent supplies.
Government security forces brought journalists to tour the devastated area, showing them the damaged Khalid Al-Fajer Hospital and a military position belonging to the SDF’s security forces that government forces had targeted.
The SDF statement accused the government of targeting the hospital “dozens of times” before patients were evacuated. Damascus accused the Kurdish-led group of using the hospital and other civilian facilities as military positions.
On one street, Syrian Red Crescent first responders spoke to a resident surrounded by charred cars and badly damaged residential buildings.
Some residents told The Associated Press that SDF forces did not allow their cars through checkpoints to leave.
“We lived a night of horror. I still cannot believe that I am right here standing on my own two feet,” said Ahmad Shaikho. “So far the situation has been calm. There hasn’t been any gunfire.”
Syrian Civil Defense first responders have been disarming improvised mines that they say were left by the Kurdish forces as booby traps.
Residents who fled are not being allowed back into the neighborhood until all the mines are cleared. Some were reminded of the displacement during Syria’s long civil war.
“I want to go back to my home, I beg you,” said Hoda Alnasiri.
