Egyptian security forces raided the hideout of the Harakat Sawa’d Misr (HASM), an internationally designated terrorist group responsible for attacks on public officials.
An exchange of gunfire during the raid killed two terrorists whom Egypt had already sentenced to death in absentia for previous crimes, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior announced in July 2025.
The two terrorists had entered Egypt secretly from an unspecified neighboring country, using unmarked roads through uninhabited border areas. HASM also had released a video showing its militants training in a desert outside Egypt and pledging to carry out terrorist operations in the country.
Egyptian police said the HASM fugitives planned to focus their violence on security personnel and public facilities.
Harakat Sawa’d Misr (Arabic for The Arms of Egypt Movement) is an Islamist militant group founded and operating in Egypt since 2016. Egyptian authorities have labeled HASM as the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Since its founding, HASM has claimed responsibility for attacks on security forces, civilians and public infrastructure. These attacks include failed assassination attempts against Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa, Zakaria Abdel Aziz, a senior assistant to Egypt’s top prosecutor, and Judge Ahmed Abul Fotouh in Nasr City.
The group also attacked a police checkpoint in 2016, killing six officers near the Giza pyramid complex. In August 2019, a HASM car bomb in front of the National Cancer Institute in central Cairo killed 20 people and injured at least 47.
The United Kingdom banned HASM as a “proscribed terrorist organization” in December 2017, and the U.S. later designated the group a foreign terrorist organization.
Sources: Al Arabiya, Sky News, U.S. State Department