There are few reliable statistics on the nationwide rise in crime. The state-run Al Ahram newspaper reported an unprecedented jump in violent crimes in 2011, largely attributed to prison breakouts and lack of police. The paper, which offered no comparable figures, said there were 2,774 killings and 2,229 kidnappings last year. The Interior Ministry said recently that crime rates were beginning to fall.
But it is the brazenness of violence that has the country troubled. Seven men burst into a bank firing weapons and robbing tellers in late January; the same day three bandits stormed an armored truck and made off with about $500,000. Days later, scores of families lined up outside a Cairo morgue, watching a broken procession of coffins that carried most of the 74 people killed in the Port Said soccer melee.
Egypt has traditionally been safer than many Western countries, but recent images have turned the nightly news into a catalog of felonies and funerals. Arms smuggled in from Libya to the west and Sudan to the south have fueled tribal clashes in southern Egypt and have wound up on the streets of the capital, where Nermeen Gomaa Khalil, a United Nations consultant, was shot and killed last week by gunmen in a passing car.
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