Dozens of people in Sharqiya governorate have attempted to capture and publicly execute a man accused of raping and killing a seven-year-old girl, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.
Angry locals surrounded a police station in the Kafr Hassan Saleh district of Zagazig on Wednesday and attempted to take the man who was inside.
The man allegedly raped the girl, killed her by hanging and left her body in a rubbish dump.
Sharqiya – Egypt's third largest governorate by population – has witnessed over a dozen street mob killings over the last two and a half years.
The latest took place on Friday, when hundreds of locals in Qataweya killed the 16-year-old son of Muslim Brotherhood figure Rabie Lasheen.
The boy was accused of shooting a 28-year-old man for insulting his father on Facebook for his affiliation to the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
Similar vigilante killings have occurred elsewhere in Egypt, but remain an infrequent phenomenon.
Citizens, however, appear to have grown bolder in taking matters into their own hands since the uprising that ousted long-time president Hosni Mubarak.
In March, a brutal lynching took place in Mahallah Ziad village in Egypt's northern Gharbiya governorate.
Residents beat up two men who had been accused of abducting two young boys.
After dragging them through the streets of the village, an angry mob stripped the men half-naked and hung them upside down from a tree in front of thousands of onlookers.
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