Roundup: Egypt silently marks revolt anniversary, police kill 3 militants

Egypt looks so quiet on Monday as the country marks the national Police Day that coincides with the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 25 protests that toppled former long-time leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Prepared for the big day, the Egyptian police in cooperation with the armed forces have been intensifying security presence in vital squares and outside state institutions nationwide, particularly at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo where the anti-Mubarak protests erupted five years ago.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi took office in mid-2014 after he, as then the military chief, led the removal of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in mid-2013 in response to mass protests against Morsi's one-year rule and his now-blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood group.

Crackdown on Morsi's loyalists following his removal left over 1,000 killed and thousands more in custody, while anti-government terror activities in Sinai and other provinces nationwide left hundreds of police and military men dead.

The Brotherhood is the only group that called for anti-government protests on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 25 protests, but they failed to mobilize rallies as few marshes with tens of protesters have easily been dispersed by police in Cairo, Giza and Alexandria.

"I hear sometimes calls for a new revolution. Why? Why do you want to ruin the country?" Sisi said in a speech in December. "If any of these calls represent the will of the Egyptians, you needn't protest to realize it."

On Monday, Cairo streets looked unusually quiet and free from vehicles and people, as if there was a curfew, except for few people gathering in a rainy afternoon at Tahrir Sqaure carrying flags of Egypt and Sisi's posters to mark the anniversary.

Policemen, deployed everywhere with many armored vehicles, exchanged chocolates and flowers with the celebrating people in Tahrir, where the underground metro station was temporarily closed for security reasons.

The cabinet's operation room said that the day was going smoothly, with neither clashes nor blasts reported.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian police killed on Monday three men in Giza's districts of Kirdasa and 6 October near the capital Cairo, saying they were terrorists, also Brotherhood members, who opened fire at the security forces during their arrest.

On the eve of the Police Day, militants on three motorbikes gunned down two policemen and a civilian and wounded four others as they assaulted a checkpoint in the Delta province of Sharqiya north of the capital Cairo.

Earlier on Thursday, at least seven policemen and three civilians were killed and several others injured in a massive explosion after police broke into an apartment used by militants for making explosive devices.

Although the Jan. 25 protests are referred to in Egypt's new constitution as a great revolution, most of Sisi's supporters and Mubarak loyalists look at it as a conspiracy to ruin the country and accuse its supporters of treason.

Besides the Islamists behind bars, many liberal young men who spearheaded the 2011 revolt are currently in prison for taking part in anti-government marshes and violating the anti-protest law. Endit