Egyptian police on Sunday raided the press syndicate in Cairo and arrested two journalists critical of the government, a syndicate official and reporters said in what the syndicate called an unprecedented crackdown. The interior ministry denied officers had stormed the press labor union building, a traditional spot in downtown Cairo to stage protests, but confirmed some of its members had arrested the journalists inside the syndicate. Security forces have sought to quell dissent since thousands took to the streets on April 15 to protest a decision by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia. Police dispersed smaller protests two weeks later. On Sunday, journalists held a sit-in inside the union when officers arrested two of them working for the opposition website Bawabet Yanayer including its editor, syndicate officials said. "The incident is true and at the very least the interior minister has to be fired and there needs to be an apology," Khalid al-Balshy, a syndicate board member told Reuters.

Mahmoud Kamel, a member of the syndicate board, said over 40 policemen raided the building but the interior ministry said its force consisted of only eight officers. "The ministry affirms that it did not raid the syndicate or use any kind of force in arresting the two journalists who handed themselves in as soon as they were told there was an arrest warrant," the interior ministry said in a statement. A security guard was wounded in the eye when police raided the union, Kamel said. "There was an arrest warrant for the two journalists issued a week ago but the syndicate was negotiating with the interior ministry over the matter," he said. The syndicate council called for an indefinite strike among Egyptian journalists until the interior minister resigns and urged newspapers to black out their front pages. "This is unprecedented, no president or prime minister or interior minister has ever dared to do something like this," Kamel said. Under the law only a prosecutor is allowed to search the union in the presence of its chairman or deputy, he added.

Egypt's journalists' syndicate called for the dismissal of the interior minister and an immediate sit-in at its headquarters in downtown Cairo on Monday. After an emergency meeting early Monday morning, the group called for the "open-ended" sit-in to run through a Wednesday general assembly meeting and World Press Freedom day on May 3. It described the police's entry into the building as a "raid by security forces whose blatant barbarism and aggression on the dignity of the press and journalists and their syndicate has surprised the journalistic community and the Egyptian people."

Egypt which faces both internal and international problems is under for fire for the murder of an Italian. It was a brutal killing that became an international incident: An Italian graduate student disappeared from the streets of the Egyptian capital in January, his body discovered days later dumped by a roadside, tortured to death. The death of Guilio Regeni quickly poisoned ties between Egypt and Italy, where suspicions were high that Egyptian police, who have long been accused of using torture and secret detentions, snatched the 28-year-old and killed him. Egyptian officials, as high up as the president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, in a national address, have denied any police role, but in the months since the slayings, the Italian government has hiked the pressure for answers. Then in March came a surprise twist. Egyptian police announced they had killed a gang of five Egyptian men they said specialized in kidnapping and robbing foreigners and, while searching the gang leader's sister's home, came upon Regeni's passport. Government media proclaimed that Regeni's killers had been found. The claim was immediately dismissed by Italian officials as not credible, with some Italian media calling it an outright cover-up. Even the editor-in-chief of Egypt's top government newspaper, Al-Ahram, wrote that Egyptian authorities had to get serious about uncovering the truth and that such "naive stories" about Regeni's death were only hurting the country.

Now accounts from witnesses and family members interviewed by The Associated Press raise further questions about the official version of the March 24 shooting in a wealthy suburban enclave outside Cairo. The Interior Ministry said security forces hunting for the gang stopped their minibus and the men opened fire on them, prompting a gun battle in which all five were killed. But witnesses say the men were unarmed and tried to flee as police fired on them, and that afterward police confiscated footage from security cameras near the scene. The men's relatives say they were house painters merely heading to a job in the suburb, Tagammu al-Khamis, when they were killed. "I am accusing the Interior Ministry of trying to cover-up their wrong deeds by killing my family," said Rasha Tareq Saad, whose husband, brother and father were among those killed. "I want my family's rights." Asked about their accounts, Interior Ministry spokesman Abu Bakr Abdel-Karim said he was not authorized to comment and referred questions to the prosecutor-general investigating the case. Repeated calls to the prosecutor-general's office went unanswered.