Muslim Brotherhood calls for rebellion against Sisi regime

The Muslim Brotherhood says its leaders killed in a Cairo apartment were murdered in "in cold blood," calling for a rebellion against President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who it calls a "butcher."   

"Come out in rebellion and in defence of your country, yourselves and your children," it said in a statement issued in English Wednesday. "Destroy the citadels of his oppression and tyranny and reclaim Egypt once more." 

It called the killings "a turning point that will have its own repercussions... el-Sissi is initiating a new phase during which it will not be possible to control the anger of the oppressed sectors who will not accept to be killed in their own houses and in the middle of their families."  

It says the men were from a Brotherhood committee that supports the families of the group's detainees and "martyrs," and were "rounded up inside the house and then were murdered in cold blood without any investigations or indictments."  

The Interior Ministry said the people killed were fugitive Muslim Brotherhood leaders who had been meeting to plan ‘terrorist plots’. It says the group included two people who had previously been sentenced to death.

The nine people were killed in an exchange of fire with security forces inside a house in October city, west Cairo.

Brotherhood leader and former MP Nasser al-Hafi were among those killed in the attack. 

A Brotherhood source denied claims that they were armed.

The killings came shortly after more dozens of soldiers were killed in a string of militant attacks in the north of the Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday. 

Wednesday's violence comes two days after a deadly car bombing killed Egypt’s attorney general Hisham Barakat in eastern Cairo. 

Egypt has been dogged by instability since Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown in a military coup on July 3, 2013.

Since Morsi's ouster, Egyptian authorities have carried out a relentless crackdown on dissent that has mainly targeted the ousted president’s supporters, leaving hundreds dead and thousands behind bars.

Rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday descibed Egypt as regressing into an all-out state of repression, and accused the regime of targeting the country's 'bravest and brightest' in order to crush dissent.