Islamist militants slaughter 25 Egyptian policemen in Sinai ambush as fears grow over Irish family arrested and held in notorious Tora jail



Militants ambushed police vans in Sinai and killed officers execution-style

Ibrihim Halawa, 17, is being beaten in Tora prison, according to his sister

Situation volatile as it emerges Hosni Mubarak could leave jail this week



Muslim Brotherhood supporters killed in Cairo as they were taken to prison

Israeli military maintains ties to Egypt's army despite ongoing chaos



Militants in Egypt today killed 25 policemen execution-style in an ambush in the Sinai Peninsula, as the chaos in the country continued.

In Cairo, fears are growing over a 17-year-old Irish boy and his three sisters who were arrested in the wake of a protest at a mosque, after another sister suggested that the teenager could have been 'beaten to hell' at the Tora prison.

The volatile situation could deteriorate further as it emerged that former president Hosni Mubarak, driven out of office by a vast wave of street protests in 2011, could be released from prison as early as this week.

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Slaughter: The scene in Sinai following the killing of 25 police officers by militants near Egypt's border with Gaza Ambulance: A vehicle holding the officers' bodies leaves the hospital at Arish in Sinai

The attack on police apparently took place this morning as two minibuses carrying off-duty officers were driving through a village near the border town of Rafah.



The suspected militants forced the two vehicles to stop, ordered the policemen out and forced them to lie on the ground before they shot them to death, according to security officials.

Sinai, which marks the border between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip, has long been considered one of the main flashpoints in the Middle East.

It has witnessed almost daily attacks by Islamist militants ever since Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi was deposed last month in a military coup.

A few hours after the attack near Rafah, suspected militants shot to death a police major as he stood guard outside a bank in the city of el-Arish, also in northern Sinai.

Arrested: The Halawa siblings, Ibrihim, Fatima, Omaima and Somala (pictured left to right) are currently in a Cairo jail after getting caught up in protests at a mosque A 17-year-old Irish boy who is currently in jail in Cairo could have been 'beaten to hell' by Egyptian prison guards, according to his sister.

Irish teenager Ibrihim Halawa and his three sisters were caught up in violence at the Al Fateh mosque on Saturday, and detained by security forces when they stormed the building.

Their sister Nasaybi Halawa, at the family home in Dublin, said she believed her siblings are being held at Tora prison, where all the men have been beaten.

'I was speaking to someone a few minutes ago and they told me that they saw my sister in Tora jail and I asked them about my brother,' Ms Halawa said.

'The person I'm speaking to told me they were beating men to hell. She doesn't know how my brother looks but she told me, "I can guarantee for you, all the men were beaten there. They didn't exclude anyone from hitting them."'

She later added: 'We are just wishing and hoping and praying that they will arrive back today or tomorrow. We have been told that they are safe but that doesn't mean they haven't been harmed or beaten. Morgue: Egyptians gathered at the Zenhoum mortuary to identify loved ones and retrieve their bodies for burial Grief: A woman mourns as she leans on the coffin of a relative killed in the unrest in Egypt

Ibrihim was arrested on Saturday along with his sisters Omaima, 20, Fatima, 22, and Somaia, 27.



He completed his school leaving certificate before the summer holiday, and was due to hear back from the universities he applied to today.



His father, Sheikh Hussein Halawa - the imam of Ireland's largest mosque - has appealed for the Irish Government to act quickly to free his children from detention.



Ms Halawa said she was worried her siblings would be killed, telling RTE Radio: 'There is no difference now between anyone. They can kill anyone.'

The situation in Egypt is set to become even more unpredictable this week if Mubarak is released from custody, as suggested today by judicial officials.



The officials said there were no longer any grounds to hold the 85-year-old former dictator, because it is illegal to imprison someone for more than two years without convicting them of a crime.



Release: Hosni Mubarak, pictured in court earlier this year, is set to be freed from prison this week

Mubarak has been in detention since April 2011. Last year he was sentenced to life in prison for his failure to stop the killing of some 900 protesters in the 18-day uprising against his rule.



His sentence was overturned on appeal and he is now being retried, along with his security chief and six top police commanders.



Today a court ordered that he should be released after being cleared of embezzling funds for presidential palaces.



Yesterday 36 Morsi supporters who had been arrested during the widespread clashes which have rocked Cairo over the past week were killed as they were transported in a prison van.

The suspects were part of a prison truck convoy of some 600 detainees heading to Abu Zaabal prison in northern Egypt, security officials said.



Detainees in one of the trucks rioted and managed to capture a police officer inside, the authorities claimed.

Chaos: The violence in Egypt continued today as 24 policemen were killed in Sinai

Clashes: Hundreds have been killed since Egypt's president Mohammed Morsi was deposed

Security forces apparently fired tear gas into the truck in hopes of freeing the badly beaten officer, suffocating and killing the prisoners.



However, state media reported that the detainees were in fact trying to escape from the prison van and came under fire during the attempt.

Most of the prisoners were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is not clear whether all of them belonged to the organisation, which has repeatedly clashed with the military-backed interim regime.

Today the government ordered an inquiry into the deaths, which it blamed on armed men allegedly trying to help the 600 Brotherhood detainees escape.

The violence adds to the ever-rising death toll in days of unrest. On Saturday alone, clashes between Morsi supporters and police killed 79 people, according to the government.



That raised the death toll for four days of unrest across the country to nearly 900. Some 70 police officers were killed in clashes with protesters or retaliatory attacks during the same period, according to the Interior Ministry.



The clashes began on Wednesday when security forces dismantled two encampments of Morsi supporters in Cairo , who demanded his reinstatement. The military overthrew Morsi in a bloodless coup on July 3 after millions took to the street demanding him to step down.

The interim government declared a state of emergency after Wednesday's clashes and imposed a curfew, turning the capital into a ghost town after 7pm every night. The government also began taking harsher measures to cripple the Brotherhood.

Lawless: A building in Sinai is shown in the aftermath of a bomb attack last week

Security forces arrested hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members yesterday in raids on their homes in different cities, aimed at disrupting planned rallies to support Morsi.

The Cabinet also held an emergency meeting to discuss the possibility of banning the group, which swept to power in the country's first democratic elections a year ago after years of being outlawed by Hosni Mubarak's government.

Israeli officials said today that they were monitoring the turmoil and keeping in close contact with Egypt's army, fearing that the ongoing chaos could jeopardise attempts to fight Islamic militants in Sinai.



The two countries signed a landmark peace treaty in 1979, and their militaries have had a close relationship ever since which has continued during the uprisings across the Arab world.



However, Israel is wary of taking sides in the dispute between the Egytian army and the Muslim Brotherhood.



'Israel does not have to support the regime, especially not publicly, said Giora Eiland, a former chairman of Israel's National Security Council. 'It is not our place to defend all the measures taken, this is not our business.'



Attack: The policemen were killed in the volatile Sinai Peninsula, near the border with Gaza and Israel

However, Eiland suggested that the international community had been overly hasty in criticising Egypt's military, saying that Israeli and Western interests are 'much closer' to the army than the Brotherhood.



'Even if we don't share the same values, we can share the same interests,' he said. 'The Israeli interest is quite clear. We want a stable regime in Egypt.'



Israeli lawmaker Shaul Mofaz, a former defence minister and military chief of staff, said it was essential that peace and order be restored in Egypt.



'The issue of the peace treaty with Egypt is Israel's highest interest,' he told Channel 2 TV. 'As long as the violence, and the confrontation between the army and the civilians and the bloodshed there increases, it endangers the peace treaty. We have an interest that life there is quiet.'