CAIRO: The main suspect in the killing of a senior ranking police officer in Suez earlier this month was killed in a shootout with police in the early hours of Tuesday.
The shootout occurred in mountains near the town of Qantara in Northern Sinai. Police had doubled their search for Ahmed Eid, 26, since a shootout in the city of Suez in which a senior police officer was killed and two others injured earlier this month.
Ibrahim Abdel-Maboud head of criminal investigations in Suez city died at the Mubarak Police Hospital in Cairo after sustaining gunshot wounds. Two other officers who were with Abdel-Maboud, head of investigations at the Ataqa police station Ahmed Mohamed Fathi Al-Bahi and Suez criminal investigations officer Ahmed Yousri Abdel-Halim, were injured and treated at Suez General Hospital.
The policemen were on the trail of Eid, a suspected drug dealer, after a tip off that he was in the Muthalath area of the city near the Suez Canal. Eid is wanted on three charges of drugs, possessing firearms without a license and firing at a police vehicle.
A statement from the Interior Ministry claimed that Eid fired on the approaching police force in their vehicles with a semi-automatic weapon which caused the injuries that the officers sustained, and which later led to the death of Abdel-Maboud.
The online news portal Masrawy reported that Eid was behind the murder of a police officer in Suez last year while on route to conduct a drug deal in the Muthalath area. This charge was not mentioned in the Interior Ministry statement.
