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Mohammed Morsi. Their grip terrorized the town's Christians, as hard-liners torched and looted their homes, businesses and churches.
• But the relief felt by the town's estimated 20,000 Christians was short-lived. They fear the troops will stay only long enough to make some arrests -- and once they're gone, the backlash from militants against them will be even worse.
• "We are too scared to talk even now with all this hokouma (government) in town," Tanyous, a 40-year-old door-to-door salesman, said at the house of a local Coptic Orthodox priest. "One day, all this police and army will go and we will have no one on our side."
• Tanyous fled his home when a Muslim mob looted and torched it in mid-August, taken in with his wife and children by a Muslim family. Emboldened by the troops' presence, they returned this week to live in the burned-out, windowless husk. Immediately, the threats began, he said.
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• CAIRO (AP) -- Egyptian security forces backed by helicopters raided on Thursday a town on the outskirts of Cairo known to be an Islamist stronghold, exchanging fire with suspected militants who killed a senior police officer.
• The Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police, said Gen. Nabil Farrag, an aide to the security chief of Cairo's twin city of Giza, was shot dead when militants opened fire on security forces approaching the town of Kerdasa to drive off suspected Islamic militants. Egypt's official news agency blamed "terrorists and criminal elements" for his death.
• Police arrested 32 suspects in house-to-house raids in Kerdasa, according to a security official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. The interior ministry said Farrag was killed by gunmen firing from the rooftops of several schools and mosques they had taken over.
• Thursday's assault on Kerdasa is the second major operation by the army and police against a militant stronghold. On Sunday, a large police and army contingent retook the town of Dalga south of Cairo, ending two months of Islamists' rule there.
• The quick succession of the two major raids underline the resolve of the military-backed government to restore law and order throughout a country roiled by unrest and violence since the 2011 ouster of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
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