Egyptian security arrest suspect militant in Sinai

Egyptian security forces Saturday arrested a militant Jihadi leader suspected of being involved in an attack that killed 16 security personnel in the Sinai peninsula. Police forces raided a hide-out in Sinai's Sheikh Zuwaid town, near Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip and Israel, after it received information about militant jihadi cells hiding in it, a security official said. The Sheikh Zuwaid town lies within a zone where Egypt's military presence is strictly limited by the country's 1979 treaty with Israel. Egyptian troops killed 11 militants in a military campaign dubbed as ''Operation Saqr'' launched in response to the attack on a checkpoint in Rafah on August 5. President Mohammed Morsi has since dispatched a delegation of Salafist sheikhs, headed by former Muslim Brotherhood lawmaker Nizar Ghorab, to hold talks with local militant groups in order to restore the peace in the volatile peninsula. Islamist militants are believed to have been responsible for several attacks on a Sinai pipeline that exports gas to Israel over the past year, as well as for raids on police stations in northern Sinai.