Militant leader urges jihad, or holy war, in Egypt

The purported leader of a militant group that has staged several small attacks over the past year in the Egyptian capital urges holy war, or jihad, calling on the young to join the extremists’ fight.

The call comes in an hour-long interview with a man identified as Magd Eddin al-Masri, who claims to be the leader of Ajnad Misr, or “Egypt’s Soldiers,” a group that surfaced as part of a rising insurgency in Egypt following the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013.

The interview by the group’s media arm was posted on social networking sites on Sunday. It is the first public appearance of al-Masri, which is Arabic for “the Egyptian,” and a move apparently aimed at gaining more prominence in the group’s campaign of retribution for the government’s crackdown on Islamists.

— AP