Egyptian police arrested 55 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday, security and Brotherhood officials said, as part of a crackdown against the opposition group ahead of parliamentary elections this month.
The arrests in four provinces bring to at least 103 the number of Brotherhood activists detained since Thursday, the largest raid since February when police arrested hundreds of Islamists along with the banned group's third-in-command Khairat el-Shatir.
Security officials said police picked up 20 Islamists in the Nile Delta province of Menoufiya on Saturday while they were hanging up banners of a Brotherhood candidate running in the June 11 polls for the upper house of the parliament, the Shoura Council. "Some other people are still unaccounted for, so the number of arrests could rise," a Brotherhood spokesman in Menoufiya told Reuters.