Egypt police shoot Bedouin protester dead -sources

Reuters, Thu Jan 27, 2011 3:23pm 

CAIRO Jan 27 (Reuters) - Security forces shot dead a Bedouin protester in the north of Egypt's Sinai region on Thursday, eyewitnesses and a security source said.

Bedouin Tribespeople (Photograph by Matt Moyer) –
 Members of a Bedouin tribe gather beneath a tent on Egypt’s
 Sinai Peninsula. The desert herdsmen make up more than half
 of Sinai’s 360,000 or so people, yet mainland Egyptians are often
 at odds with the desert-dwelling tribes who have historically
roamed vast territories.

The 22-year-old man, Mohamed Atef, was shot in the head while demonstrating in the town of Sheikh Zoweid, they said. Security forces fired tear gas to disperse dozens of protesters.

The shooting came as police fought protesters in Suez and Ismailia, two cities straddling the Suez Canal that separates Sinai from the rest of Egypt.

Bedouin, among nomadic tribes in Egypt's northeast Sinai region, often complain of neglect by the government and of police harrassment.

(Reporting by Yousri Mohamed and Marwa Awad; Editing by Louise Ireland)