Misr assault rifle

The Misr, whose Arabic name means Egypt, is an Egyptian copy of the Soviet AKM assault rifle, made by Factory 54 of the Maadi Company for Engineering Industries in Cairo. It is chambered for the 7.62x39mm cartridge and is gas operated with a rotating bolt. Egypt began building Kalashnikov-pattern rifles from 1959 after it aligned itself with the Soviet Union, with Egyptian technical staff trained in Russia until Soviet advisers were expelled in 1972. The military version, called the Maadi, is a licence-produced AKM with a side-folding stock, a chrome-plated bore and either a 30-round box or a 75-round drum magazine. Compared with the Soviet AKMS it uses plastic for the handguard and pistol grip and has an upper receiver that accepts most American and NATO optics. A semi-automatic civilian version, the ARM, was imported into the United States in large numbers during the 1980s. Users include the Egyptian Armed Forces and police, Afghan police and Rwanda.