Bodies of Egyptian militants released

Early on Monday morning, the corpses of two of the three militants who carried out an armed attack on Israel, near the Egyptian border last Friday, were returned after their identification. The military prosecutor decided not to release the third corpse as it has yet to be identified. The families of the Ahmed Wagih Abu al-Hamd, a 31 year old engineer, and Bahaa Zakzouk, who was 24, arrived at the Ismailia Public Hospital at midnight and the procedures were completed at around 4.30 in the morning. With the ablutions having been performed at the hospital, the bodies were then transported by car to family cemetery for them to be buried. The dead young men, who were cousins, came from Mit Khakan, a village of Shebin el-Koum, Minufiya. Dozens of their family members had been staying in Ismailia for days in order to complete the process to release the bodies. The prosecutor had decided to dispatch a forensics doctor to sign the medical report and take a DNA sample inside the hospital. The militants had been killed in during an attack which Ansar Bayt al-Maqdes, a group linked to al-Qaeda, claimed was in response to the anti-Prophet film that flared protests and violence around the world. Another Israeli soldier was wounded in the attack. This is at least the fifth similar attack to have been carried out across the border in little more than a year, as security has loosened following the uprising that toppled former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.