Security forces kill nine "armed men" in Cairo suburb

July 1, 2015 2:26 PM

"A group of Brotherhood leaders were killed in cold blood in a house in 6th of October (suburb)," a Brotherhood spokesman, Mohamed Montase, told Al Jazeera television.

Policemen and army personnel at the site of a car bomb attack on the convoy of Egyptian public prosecutor Hisham Barakat near his house at Heliopolis district in Cairo, Egypt, June 29, 2015. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

Egyptian security forces stormed an apartment in a western Cairo suburb and killed nine men whom they said were armed, security sources said.

The sources said authorities had received information the group was planning to carry out an attack. Among the dead was Nasser al-Hafi, a prominent lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood and a former lawmaker.

The now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood denied that the men were armed and said they were holding an "organizational meeting".

"A group of Brotherhood leaders were killed in cold blood in a house in 6th of October (suburb)," a Brotherhood spokesman, Mohamed Montase, told Al Jazeera television.

"There were no clashes," he said.

Hafi was sentenced to death in absentia by a criminal court last month in a case related to mass jail break during the country's 2011 uprising. Islamist President Mohamed Mursi was sentenced to death in the same case.

Wednesday's incident took place on the same day that the army was fighting an attack by Islamic State militants in the Sinai and two days after Egypt's public prosecutor was killed by a car bomb in Cairo.