Egypt's crackdown on Islamists has jailed 16,000 people over the past eight months in the country's biggest round-up in nearly two decades, according to previously unreleased figures from security officials.

Four senior officials -- two from the Interior Ministry and two from the military -- gave The Associated Press a count of 16,000, including about 3,000 top- or mid-level members of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.

Some 2,000 Brotherhood supporters have been killed by police in crackdowns on pro-Morsi protests that Islamists have held for months around the country.

Human rights activists' reports of abuses by the police have caused little public outcry.

He and the others were taken to a second police station and held for 10 days, with about 15 people crammed in a 7-square-meter (square-yard) cell, then were taken to Abu Zaabal prison just north of Cairo.

At the prison, they were kept in the parked police truck for 90 minutes.

Ahmed el-Yamani, a 52-year-old Brotherhood member who was held for nearly five months after his arrest in August, said he shared a 7-by-5 meter (yard) cell with 35 other detainees.

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