In today's brief:
The Supreme Council for Media Regulation affirmed, today, that the websites that did not obtain licences are “a tiny and very limited proportion,” without mentioning figures or naming any of them, while websites such as Al-Manassa have been waiting for a reply to their applications since 2018, and a court ruled last month to close Mada Masr for operating without a licence despite its repeated applications.
In a wording also free of names, the Ministry of Interior announced the killing of nine people it described as “highly dangerous criminal elements” in raids in governorates it did not specify, in the latest statement in a series in which the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights counted 573 people killed over a year and a half. In the south, the army launched the fourth phase of its campaign against what it calls illegal gold mining, affirming that its operations take place “inside the Egyptian borders,” while Sudanese sources describe the site of the 10 October strike as being in Sudan’s Red Sea State.
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi directed a study of securing a “strategic stockpile” for emergencies, about two and a half weeks after saying that the reserves suffice for six months, the figure the government has repeated since 2022. In the electricity file, the holding company denied charging subscribers any sums “without legal grounds or basis,” three weeks after the Minister of Electricity announced that replacing old meters would be at citizens’ expense.
In Qalyubia, the governor gave owners of unlicensed marinas in Al-Qanater Al-Khayriya 48 hours to vacate them in preparation for developing the corniche, while the Ministry of Supply raised again its target for converting ration outlets into the “Carry On” chain by the end of the year, while the number of open outlets stood at 24, according to the last figure announced by the minister on 27 October.
Regionally, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty opened the Egyptian embassy building in Tripoli about 12 years after its closure, and six years after the “red line” that Sisi declared at Sirte and Jufra, on the day on which a joint Egyptian-Turkish naval exercise started, as Cairo continues to reject the Turkish-Libyan maritime memorandum of understanding.
The Supreme Council for Media Regulation, headed by Khaled Abdelaziz, affirmed, today, that the websites that were not granted a licence “represent a tiny and very limited proportion,” and that it issued “a large number of licences” to the websites that met “the legal, procedural or financial requirements,” without mentioning any figures or naming any of the websites whose applications were rejected or are still waiting. The statement was issued on the day of a meeting called by the freedoms committee of the Journalists’ Syndicate, headed by Eman Ouf, with the websites awaiting licensing, to discuss “the obstacles to issuance.”
Zawia3 found no published total tally of licence applications and of what was accepted and rejected since the issuance of the Press and Media Regulation Law No. 180 of 2018. In its annual report for 2021, the council announced approving the licensing of 45 websites and rejecting 16, while the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression recorded that about 150 websites submitted applications between October 2018 and January 2019, only 40 of which obtained approval. According to a count announced by rights organizations in a statement published by the association in June 2023, the number of blocked websites and links in Egypt reached 562, including at least 132 news websites.
Among the websites that the statement did not name are Al-Manassa, which applied for a licence in October 2018 and then in August 2020 without receiving a reply, and was blocked for the first time in June 2017; Fakkar Tany, whose application was rejected in September 2024 and whose appeal is still under review; and Zawia3 itself, blocked in Egypt since February 2025.
As for Mada Masr, blocked since May 2017, it applied for a licence in October 2018 and then in August 2020, and its editor-in-chief, Lina Attalah, learned during her questioning in 2022 that the council had rejected the application, according to Mada Masr, then it submitted a new application in June 2023 that is still without a reply. On 27 October, the Fifth Settlement Misdemeanour Court in New Cairo ruled to fine Attalah 3 million pounds ($55,500), close the website and confiscate its equipment on the charge of operating without a licence, and the appeal will be heard before the New Cairo Misdemeanour Appeals Court on 25 November.
The Ministry of Interior announced, today, the killing of nine people it described as “highly dangerous criminal elements” and the killing of a police member, during raids on what it called “criminal hotbeds” in “a number of governorates” it did not specify, which it said bring in narcotics and unlicensed weapons, and that the dead had previously been sentenced in felonies including premeditated murder, drug trafficking and kidnapping. The statement did not mention the names of the dead or of the police member, nor the places of the raids or their date, and one of its published versions contented itself with the phrase “referral to the Public Prosecution to undertake the investigations,” without clarifying whether the investigations include the circumstances of the killing.
The statement comes within a series of statements in similar wording, including the killing of six in Qalyubia and Beheira on 12 October, five in Minya, Qena and Assiut on 18 October, and six in Aswan and Sohag on 3 September. On 20 August, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights counted the killing of 573 people in operations announced by the ministry itself in 206 statements between January 2025 and June 2026, including 404 in 2025 alone, which it said equals 17 times the number of death sentences carried out in that year, and called on the Public Prosecutor to investigate them, noting that, according to its monitoring, the ministry did not announce opening an independent investigation into any of them.
Human Rights Watch had said in May 2025 that two men were apparently killed in Matrouh hours after they handed themselves in, according to evidence it described as credible, while the ministry described what happened as an exchange of fire.
The Armed Forces launched, today, the fourth phase of their campaign against illegal mining of gold ore in the Eastern Desert, two days after a press conference in which the military spokesman, Colonel (Staff) Ahmed Otman, said that “all operations to confront illegal gold mining take place inside the Egyptian borders,” and announced the detention of 691 people, including 540 foreigners, and the killing of two Border Guards officers, Colonel Ahmed Samir, chief of staff of the Southern Region Border Guards, and Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Gouda, operations chief of a Border Guards battalion.
The spokesman described one of the areas of the first phase, Jabal Eiqat, as lying “north of latitude 22, inside the Egyptian borders,” while Sudanese sources describe the Al-Uqaydat area, which an analysis published by Zawia3 suggests is the same area, as “the far north of” the Sudanese Red Sea State. North of latitude 22, on its eastern side, lies the Halaib Triangle, disputed between the two countries, which Egypt administers and Sudan considers part of Red Sea State, so the two descriptions, if proven to refer to the same place, both hold, each according to its state’s claim. The analysis, published on 22 October, had detected a change in satellite images on 10 October at a published coordinate of the strike site in Eigad, 8.7 kilometres north of latitude 22 inside the Halaib Triangle.
The Sudanese group Emergency Lawyers had said that a strike on the area on 10 October killed at least 72 miners, and the head of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, formed a fact-finding committee whose results have not been announced so far, while the Egyptian army affirmed in its statement on 12 October that the campaign aims at “imposing full sovereignty within the borders of the Egyptian state,” without referring to the strike or the dead. Yesterday, the coalition “Sudanese Declaration of Principles Forces” rejected the fourth phase, and demanded “independent and neutral international investigation committees.”
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi directed, today, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Abdel Rahman Rabie, Chief of the Armed Forces Operations Authority and head of the National Authority for Crisis and Emergency Management, to study securing “a strategic stockpile for the state of all needs to confront emergency situations,” and all institutions to finish quickly entering their data into the authority’s system, without the presidential statement specifying the intended goods or the size of the stockpile, its cost or its funding sources.
The directive comes about two and a half weeks after the president said, at the Egypt 2026 Forum on 21 October, that Egypt’s reserves of strategic goods suffice for six months, and five days after the Minister of Supply, Sherif Farouk, repeated the same figure. The six-month figure has been repeated in official statements since Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly tasked the ministers in June 2022 with providing a stock of wheat, oil and strategic goods “for 6 months,” then said in April 2026 that the government is working to increase it by “two additional months,” before he said in May that it “currently ranges between 3 and 6 months.” The announced figures for wheat vary; in April 2025 the Minister of Supply said that wheat balances with contracts suffice for 3.4 months, while Madbouly said in May 2026 that the wheat reserve may extend to nearly a full year.
The directive came two days after the cabinet’s approval of a draft decree to rationalize public spending for three months, which prohibits contracting for new projects until 30 June 2027, exempts “presidential assignments and directives” and food security projects, and obliges adherence to “the plan set to reduce wheat import quantities in light of the increase achieved in the quantities of local wheat supplied.”
The Egyptian Electricity Holding Company denied, today, a woman’s accusations in a video clip on social media of irregularities in writing electricity-theft reports, installing coded meters and changing broken meters, and affirmed taking “the necessary legal measures” regarding it, stressing “not charging any subscriber sums of money without legal grounds or basis.”
The Minister of Electricity, Mahmoud Esmat, had said on 16 October, as reported by Bloomberg, that changing meters in place for ten years “will be at the citizens’ expense,” with instalments available, without a list of the prices of the new meters or the instalment terms being published. Since the beginning of October, citizens in Alexandria, Beni Suef, Minya and Qalyubia have been complaining of the stopping of charging of their prepaid meters and being asked to pay between 2,500 and 3,000 pounds ($46 to $56) to replace them, while the government denied stopping charging.
MP Ashraf Marzouk, member of the House of Representatives for the Homat Watan Party, submitted a briefing request to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Electricity against making citizens bear the cost of replacement, which he said may exceed 1,800 pounds ($33) with installation and inspection fees, stressing that “electricity distribution companies are responsible for selecting them, installing them and setting their specifications.”
The Governor of Qalyubia, Hossam Abdel Fattah, gave, today, owners of unlicensed marinas on the Nile in the city of Al-Qanater Al-Khayriya 48 hours to vacate them and remove “all the occupancies and encroachments belonging to them,” in preparation for developing the Nile corniche in cooperation with the Fatimid Cairo agency, a development the governorate said will turn the corniche into “a tourist attraction area,” adding that the marina owners “showed their understanding.” The statement did not mention the number of marinas or of those working in them, nor whether their owners will receive compensation or a chance to regularize their status.
The authorities have previously given short deadlines to vacate structures on the banks of the Nile; in June 2022 the authorities gave residents of 32 residential houseboats in Kit Kat in Giza about two weeks to vacate, without compensation, and the removal of the houseboats was completed on 4 July. In July 2017, the authorities demolished houses on Warraq Island in a campaign to recover state land in which the government described the homes as “encroachments” on state property, and one of the residents was killed during it.
The Minister of Supply and Internal Trade, Sherif Farouk, said, today, that the ministry is working on converting between 250 and 300 of the “Gameaty” outlets and ration grocers into “Carry On” outlets during the current year, within a plan to develop about 40,000 goods distribution outlets in partnership with the private sector, from a network that includes about 30,000 ration grocers, 8,000 outlets of “Gameaty” and 1,060 consumer complexes.
The target for the end of the year changed more than once in less than two months: 168 outlets in mid-September, then about 200 before the Senate on 27 October, then between 200 and 250 hours later according to the ministry’s spokesman, Ahmed Kamal, then between 250 and 300 today, while the number of actually open outlets remained 24 as of 27 October, according to the minister himself. The ministry did not announce the cost of the development or the contractual details of the partnership, the minister said only that outlet owners will remain “key partners,” and it did not clarify the effect of the conversion on dispensing ration goods to cardholders.
Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty opened, today, the Egyptian embassy building in the Libyan capital Tripoli, about 12 years after its closure in 2014, and his meeting with the head of the Libyan Government of National Unity, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, saw a renewed affirmation of “Egypt’s legal position” on the maritime memorandum of understanding between Turkey and Libya, according to the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Nader Zaki.
The visit comes more than six years after President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi declared, in June 2020, that “crossing Sirte and Jufra is a red line,” and the House of Representatives’ approval in July of the same year of sending elements of the Armed Forces “on combat missions outside the borders of the Egyptian state” in “the western strategic direction.” The Egyptian Foreign Ministry had rejected the maritime memorandum of understanding since its signing in November 2019 between Ankara and the Government of National Accord, then described it on 21 October as “absolutely null and void,” a day after the Libyan House of Representatives in Benghazi ratified it unanimously, the same council on which Sisi relied in 2020 as a source of legitimacy for any Egyptian intervention in Libya.
On the same day, the joint Egyptian-Turkish naval exercise “Sea of Friendship 2026” started within the Northern Fleet’s area, with the participation of Turkish naval units that arrived at the Alexandria naval base, the second since the exercise’s resumption in September 2025 after a 13-year halt.
Photos: Lina Attalah, photographed by Jennifer 8. Lee via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0); Interior Minister Mahmoud Tawfik, Egyptian Channel One via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0); President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, photographed by Simon Walker / Number 10 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
