Egypt Gives Police New Powers as Students Clash

Egypt's interim rulers on Thursday gave police the power to enter university campuses to quell protests without seeking prior permission, state media reported, after a student was killed in clashes.

The military-installed cabinet said police could now enter campuses in case of "threats and to confront protests that could harm students", state news agency MENA quoted a cabinet statement as saying.

Police previously had to obtain permission from the prosecutor general or university authorities before entering campuses or dormitories to deal with demonstrators or clashes.

Thursday's move came after a student was killed in clashes at an Al-Azhar University dorm in Cairo's Nasr City district overnight, a security official and a medic said.

The student had been hit by birdshot in the chest and neck.

The clashes were between supporters and opponents of the military-installed authorities, security officials said, adding that groups of students also confronted each other at Cairo University on Thursday.

Meanwhile, a court in the capital sentenced 38 Al-Azhar university students to 18 months in prison for "participating in violence" at the campus in October, MENA reported.

Students who support the new authorities and those who oppose it have clashed regularly in Cairo and other universities since the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi on July 3.

The authorities are engaged in a crackdown on his Islamist supporters in which more than 1,000 people have been killed since the middle of August and thousands more have been arrested.

Among initiatives announced by the cabinet on Thursday was boosting the powers of the police and military to help fight "terrorism", MENA said.

Islamist militants have stepped up attacks in the restive Sinai since Morsi's ouster and have also targeted security forces outside the peninsula.

On Wednesday, a car bombing in the Sinai killed 11 soldiers and wounded 34, and another blast in Cairo wounded four policemen.

The Sinai attack was the deadliest in the region bordering Gaza and Israel since an August 19 ambush on a security convoy killed 25 police in the north Sinai town of Rafah.

Earlier on Thursday, a police officer was shot dead north of Cairo while on a mission to arrest militants suspected of assassinating a senior security official on Sunday.

Captain Ahmed Samer Mahmoud was killed at dawn in an operation in the Nile Delta town of Qulubiya when a special forces team exchanged fire with militants, the interior ministry said.

The team was chasing "terrorist elements" wanted for Sunday's murder of Lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Mabruk, it said.

Mabruk, an officer involved in the crackdown against Islamists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Morsi belonged, was shot dead in Cairo.

A Sinai-based group linked to al-Qaida, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, said its militants had killed him.

The group had previously claimed it bombed the interior minister's convoy in a failed assassination attempt in September.

MENA said on Thursday the cabinet also decided to review recent citizenships offered to non-Egyptians, referring mainly to the nearly three years since long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak quit in February 2011.

Media reports have previously said Morsi's government had stepped up efforts to grant Egyptian nationality to Palestinians staying in the country.