Egyptian authorities have arrested 26 people, mostly engineers and technicians allegedly with links to al-Qaida, who were plotting attacks on oil pipelines and ships in the busy Suez Canal.
The group, which was being tracked by the Egyptian security for months, comprised 25 Egyptians and one Palestinian. They were also reportedly promoting ideologies of takfir and jihad.
The group had been communicating with terror outfits linked with Al-Qaeda via the Internet and was planning to attack vital sectors in the country, such as the Suez Canal and oil pipelines, Egyptian security sources said.
The arrest comes at a time when Egypt is working hard to foil attempts by foreign terror outfits to deploy extremists inside the country or dispatch elements from outside.
Some of the group members being engineers and technicians were able to develop electronic circuits for explosion using infrared rays, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
They also used Global Positioning System devices for navigation purposes, and received online donations collected for supporting Islamic charity, the security sources said.
All the 26 members of the group have confessed they intended to conduct terror operations in the country.
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