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Cairo - Egypt has extended its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood to include burning books it says promote violence and ideas linked to the banned Islamist group, a local official and a security source said on Saturday.
Samia Mehrez, an official in the Red Sea province, told Reuters that local authorities and the security forces had burned "a number of Brotherhood books and literature" located at a public library in the resort town of Hurghada.
She said the 36 books had been donated to the library during the one-year presidency of Mohammed Morsi, who was ousted by the army last year following mass protests against his rule.
Morsi's Brotherhood supporters have since faced a security crackdown in which thousands have been arrested and many hundreds killed. The group's political wing was banned on Saturday.
A security source said the destroyed materials included books on bomb making and others that compared Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna to the Prophet Mohammed and praised Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
Relations between Egypt and Turkey have soured since Morsi's ousting. Egypt has summoned the Turkish charge d'affaires twice in the past month to complain about comments by Erdogan deemed insulting to the leadership in Cairo.
Former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who won presidential elections in May less than a year after leading Morsi's overthrow, has said the Brotherhood would cease to exist during his rule. The Brotherhood maintains it is a peaceful movement.
