CAIRO: Egypt’s interim president Thursday extended a nationwide state of emergency by two months, citing security conditions in the country, while state TV blamed Hamas for training Egyptian Islamists.

 

The nearly month-old state of emergency, which gives security forces greater powers of arrest, had been due to expire within days. It was first declared in mid-August after authorities cleared two protest encampments held by supporters of ousted President Mohammad Morsi, unleashing violence that claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 in subsequent days.

 

A nighttime curfew has also been in effect in much of the country since. The government will decide separately on whether to continue the curfew.

 

The extension had been widely expected, and the decree cited continued security concerns.

 

Scattered protests by Morsi supporters continue nearly daily, and the government says it faces an organized violent campaign to destabilize the country. Authorities have been carrying out a crackdown on supporters of Morsi, including leading members of his Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, accusing them of inciting violence.

 

Security officials say at least 2,000 Brotherhood members and other Islamists have been arrested in the past month, all of them facing prosecution.

 

At the same time, extremist attacks on police stations, government offices and churches have grown more brazen in south Egypt, the restive Sinai and closer to the capital.

 

A day earlier, a pair of suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden cars into military targets in the volatile Sinai Peninsula, killing nine soldiers.

 

Last week, a suicide car bombing in Cairo targeted the convoy of Interior Minister Mohammad Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police. He escaped unharmed but a civilian was killed in the first such political assassination attempt since Morsi’s July 3 ouster.

 

In an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm Wednesday, interim Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi said the government was recommending the state of emergency be extended for a month or two because of “an increasingly tense situation.” He called it an “exceptional” measure that should be used minimally.

 

According to the interim constitution, the state of emergency can only be imposed for three months, then it must be put to a public referendum. For most of the 30-year rule of Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, the state of emergency was imposed as the government said it was battling terrorism.

 

Shortly after Mubarak’s ouster it was lifted.

 

Egyptian state television accused Palestinian Hamas militants of training Egyptian Islamists in how to carry out bombings, piling yet more pressure on the Brotherhood, ally of Hamas.

 

In neighboring Gaza, the ruling Hamas Islamists strongly denied the allegations.

 

The allegations that Hamas has been training Egyptian militants could lead the military-backed authorities to escalate their crackdown on the Brotherhood.

 

“Security authorities have learned that the military wing of the Hamas movement trained several people to undertake car bombing operations and trained various others to make explosives,” a presenter said on state television.

 

“The military wing of the Hamas movement provided various Salafi jihadists and also other religious currents with 400 land mines. The security apparatus documented this and they will be arrested.”

 

Fawzi Barhoum, spokesman for the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, said of the report: “This is completely incorrect.”

 

It was an “attempt to demonize Hamas,” he added.

 

The army-backed government in Egypt has tightened control of crossings from the Sinai peninsula into Gaza, which Egypt ruled from 1948 to 1967, and continued assaults on militants in Sinai.

 

Two Egyptian army tanks crossed an initial border fence leading to Gaza for the first time Thursday, witnesses said, but did not enter the Palestinian territory itself.

 

Gaza’s Hamas rulers neither confirmed nor denied the incursion, but said no Egyptian tanks had entered the besieged Strip.

 

Also Thursday, a court acquitted all 14 defendants accused of killing 17 protesters during the bloodiest day of the revolt against Mubarak – a verdict that could add to tensions in the country.

 

The deaths in Suez City triggered violence across Egypt on what was later called the “Friday of Rage” – Jan. 28, 2011 – that fueled an 18-day uprising against Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt for 30 years.

 

Police cleared the courtroom after families of victims broke down and screamed. Some fainted after hearing the verdict, a witness who attended the court session said.

 

“Today the blood of Egyptians has become cheap. The rulings that come out in Egypt are politicized,” said Ali Gunaidi, the spokesman for the victims’ families.

 

“There are no rulings in accordance with the laws but rather they are according to orders.”