Muslim extremists and police clashed in four shootouts across Egypt, and authorities said Wednesday that 13 militants and five other people were killed.
The dead included three policemen and the wife and baby of an extremist, police said. At least 17 people were wounded in the clashes Tuesday and Wednesday.It was the highest death toll for a 24-hour period since 1981 in the fight between Egypt's secular government and Muslim extremists who are trying to replace it with a strict Islamic state.
The worst incident occurred Tuesday night in the southern city of Aswan, where seven extremists died and at least 15 were wounded in a gunfight with police.
That clash, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman, promp-ted security searches for ex-tre-mists in other parts of the country.