Slain general was key in Egypt's war on militants

Slain general was key in Egypt's war on militants

CAIRO (Reuter): Suspected Moslem militants killed a leading but anonymous figure in Egypt's secret war against them on Saturday in a professional assassination that suggested militants might have penetrated security forces.

First reports said five attackers came at Major-General Raouf Khairat from two directions as he drove away from his house in the posh Cairo neighborhood of Masahat on Saturday night, security sources said.

Two men shot at him from a motorcycle and three others in a car threw a bomb which set Khairat's car ablaze. His body was badly charred in the fire and it was not immediately clear whether he died from that or the shooting.

Moslem militants in Egypt government have now killed five police generals and mounted similar professional assassination attempts on three ministers in the past year. But they have all been public figures traveling in high-profile motorcades.

Gen. Khairat, 53, was a secret operative in Egypt's intelligence war against the militants. He used a code-name, wore plain clothes and had no bodyguards in order not to attract attention, security sources said.

He had spent 20 years monitoring militant groups, starting long before they were considered a major security threat in Egypt, and headed a little-known section of State Security called the Department for Combating Religious Activity.

Security sources said it was not exactly clear immediately how the gunmen had tracked down Khairat to his house but the attack was another sign that militants might have penetrated Egypt's security forces.

It was an army lieutenant in an official parade who assassinated the late president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Last month, Egypt executed an army officer and two army conscripts for planting explosives at an airbase in readiness for a visit by President Hosni Mubarak.

The attackers escaped but abandoned the motorcycle some distance from the scene of the attack. Police said passers-by took the registration number of the car.

The attack also came as a reminder that militants could still operate beyond the southern province of Assiut, scene of most of Egypt's militant violence, despite police crackdowns and a string of military trials and executions.

The militant Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) has killed dozens of policemen in Assiut this year but its only recent operations in Cairo have been a series of bombs at banks which ignore the Islamic ban on usury.

Militants in Cairo had otherwise seemed to be on the defensive this year. The police have killed 12 militants in three raids or ambushes and they say they have broken up the group which planted the bombs.

Militant activity in general had declined in the past two weeks and the government has been publicizing its successes in persuading militants to surrender to the authorities.

More than 350 people have been killed in political violence in Egypt over the past two years, the vast majority of them either militants or policemen.