Bedouins Shoot Egyptian Policeman, Steal Weapons

Hospital sources said the officers from the police post were in hospital with bruises, broken bones and `nervous shock`.

Bedouins in Sinai wounded an Egyptian policeman in a drive-by shooting on Thursday, security sources said, in the latest manifestation of explosive tensions between the two sides.

The 22-year-old policeman was shot three times in the right leg and left foot, and is being treated in hospital in the North Sinai capital El Arish, the sources added.

Security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said Bedouins had stolen dozens of assault rifles, thousands of bullets, night vision devices and communications equipment when they stormed a police post on Tuesday and detained policemen.

The violence, the most serious in months between Bedouin tribesmen and police, started on Monday after police fired on a Bedouin-owned vehicle that ignored orders to stop, killing one man and wounding another.

In the protests that followed, Bedouin retaliated for Monday's shooting by briefly kidnapping 25 policemen and storming a police post near Egypt's border with Israel, and police shot dead three Bedouins in a protest on Tuesday.

Hospital sources said the officers from the police post were in hospital with bruises, broken bones and "nervous shock".

Northern Sinai is home to about 200,000 formerly nomadic Bedouins and is one of Egypt's poorest areas, with high unemployment.

Bedouins say they are shut out of jobs in the lucrative tourism and petroleum sectors in Sinai, which produces a significant share of Egypt's oil from offshore fields and is dotted with resorts popular with tourists.

Jobs at the few privately owned factories in the region and senior posts in state institutions usually go to workers from the Nile Valley, as part of a policy of increasing the population of Sinai and integrating it with the rest of the country, analysts and human rights groups say.

Egypt blamed a series of attacks on Sinai tourist targets between 2004 and 2006 on a group of Bedouins with militant Islamist views. Bedouins resent the mistrust and complain of police harassment and abuse.