US military assistance to Egypt is facing increased scrutiny following allegations that Sen. Bob Menendez used his influence in Congress to secretly aid the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Journalist Ariane Lavrilleux authored a report that said French intelligence had been misused by Egypt to target smugglers on the Libyan border and kill civilians.

The US government has for the first time included Egypt in its list of countries employing child soldiers, focusing primarily on the North Sinai region where Egypt has been battling an insurgency for about a decade.

Seven Egyptian soldiers were killed in an explosion at an air defence base in North Sinai on Sunday, The New Arab’s Arabic-language site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has reported.

The Biden administration has allowed much of US foreign military aid to Egypt to go ahead, saying the country was vital for US national security interests, despite what critics have said about widespread human rights abuses, Reuters reports.

The United States plans to withhold $85m in military aid to Egypt owing to Cairo’s failure to uphold US conditions on freeing political prisoners and other human rights issues, a US senator said, with some of the withheld funds being redirected to Taiwan.

Dissent in Egypt has long been quashed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who did not hesitate to unleash a bloodbath after his 2013 military coup, conduct mass arrests, and build mega prison complexes.

The Pentagon has increased its contribution to regular war games with Egypt, even as the Biden administration faces increasing pressure from Democrats in Congress to curtail military funds to Cairo in response to widespread human rights abuses.

Two members of the Union of Sinai Tribes were killed and a third wounded on Sunday in what local and medical sources who spoke to Mada Masr said was “an internal conflict” that broke out at the tribal union’s center in Sheikh Zuwayed, North Sinai.

It has been 10 years since hundreds of protesters were killed in Egypt’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, the biggest massacre in the country’s modern history. But for Amr Hashad, the memories will forever remain imprinted on his mind.