Special to WorldTribune.com

CAIRO — Egypt’s security forces have been struck by a mutiny.

Security sources said hundreds of Egyptian police officers abandoned
their posts and took to the streets.

The sources said the officers blocked a highway near Cairo on May 5 after a brawl in a facility of the Central Security Forces in which a cadet was killed.

“Senior security officials have managed to contain the crisis involving
conscripts in the Central Security Forces, who cut the Cairo-Ismailiya
desert road,” Egypt’s state-owned Al Ahram daily reported.

Al Ahram, in the first report in decades of mutiny by regime forces,
said the protest by CSF officers stemmed from a fight between two cadets at the so-called January 25 training camp in the eastern desert. The newspaper said a rumor was sparked that one of the cadets was killed.

“An officer in the Central Security Forces attacked one of the
conscripts leading to a fight between the two, which prompted a rumor among
the conscripts that their colleague had been killed,” Al Ahram said on May 7.

CSF, which last underwent a rebellion in 1986, has been a leading agency
in the Interior Ministry. The force has been used in anti-riot and
counter-insurgency operations in both the African mainland as well as
Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

The sources said CSF has been ridden by poor morale in wake of the
ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. They said
officers have long complained of insufficient training and poor pay.

  Cairo-Ismailiya desert road, Central Security Forces, January 25 training camp, Poorly-paid, Post-Mubarak morale crisis: Egypt security forces stage a mutiny, Sinai Peninsula