CAIRO 

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday renewed a longstanding countrywide state of emergency for a further three-month period.

In a presidential decree, al-Sisi justified the move by saying the country continued to face “dangerous security conditions”.

Parliament has yet to approve the decree but is widely expected to do so shortly.

It is the eighth time for al-Sisi to renew the state of emergency since April 2017, when twin bomb attacks left 45 people dead in northern Egypt.

The state of emergency allows the authorities to take exceptional measures, including the referral of terrorism suspects to state security courts, the imposition of curfews, and the censoring of newspapers.

Writing by Mahmoud Barakat