If I had to guess, I would think that these guys are reinforcements.
One thing we aren't hearing about in mainstream media is death toll on the bad guys side. You hear about every GI that has a hang nail, but you don't really hear about the losses that terrorists are taking as a percent of their available forces.
You have to wonder how difficult it actually is to train terrorists in the kind of numbers that it would take to make a dent in the world, and how many of them are currently concentrated in Iraq right now to stop the democratization. With round the clock satellite surveillance, training and supplying reinforcements in sufficient number must be very hard and expensive.
I think this amounts to Egypt sending in 900 reinforcements to Iraq.
If you link this bit of news to the comments of Khomeini's grandson today, there are a whole lot of hardliners that must be getting awfully nervous right now. You can count the House of Saud in that number as well.
The government of Egypt is not really interested in justice. It is interested, however, in its own power and wealth. When the Islamicists leave it alone, they let them rant against Israel and the west. If they want to run bombs into Gaza, they don't care. If they want to send bombers to NYC (see the first WTC attack), they don't care very much.
When on the other hand they directly attack the *Egyptian* government - as they did when they killed Sadat - the government throws 10,000 of them in jail and tortures them for 10 years. When they attack tourists inside Egypt, they threaten state revenue and for that, 10,000 of them go to jail for 5 years, in conditions that are merely unpleasant.
It is one racket keeping on top of another would be racket. The reason the government passes for "moderate" and "rationalist" is because they are unscrupulous goons without a principle in the world, totally devoted to their own power and wealth. Which gives them a certain predictability - they can be bought, for instance. The reason the Islamicists qualify as "extreme" is they can't be bought off.