Egypt detains 50 Muslim Brotherhood students: source

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police detained 50 students from the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's most powerful opposition group, in a renewed crackdown on the movement Saturday, a Brotherhood source said.

A security source gave the figure as 45 detained.

The detainees are students from several universities throughout Egypt and had been holidaying in the coastal city of Alexandria when police raided their lodgings, the Brotherhood source said.

The security source said they had been detained for holding meetings and possessing Brotherhood literature.

Brotherhood deputy leader Mohamed Habib said the crackdown on the group's youth wing was part of the government's continuing efforts to contain and marginalise the movement.

"The students are among the active elements of the Brotherhood, particularly in the universities," Habib told Reuters.

An interior ministry spokesman said he knew nothing about the detentions.

The government says the Brotherhood is an illegal organisation and it frequently detains its members, often releasing them without charge after days or weeks in detention.

But the organisation runs an office in Cairo and fields candidates in elections as independents.

The Brotherhood, which rejects violence, won 88 seats in the 454-seat parliament in 2005, but failed to win any seat to the upper house of parliament in June elections that were marred by reports of widespread irregularities.