Blast targeting Egyptian police kills 1, injures 9

CAIRO — An explosive device struck a police patrol in the Egyptian capital Friday, killing one police officer and injuring nine others, as street battles broke out in a nearby district known as a hotspot for pro-Islamist demonstrations.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry said that a police officer died from wounds sustained in the attack on his patrol in eastern Cairo’s populous Ein Shams district. One of the injured was a civilian, the ministry said. Egypt’s official news agency MENA reported earlier that security forces sealed off the area, diverted traffic and deployed explosives experts to search for other bombs.

Egyptian militant group Ajnad Misr or Egypt’s Soldiers said on its Twitter account that its members targeted the security force as they were heading to the nearby Alf Maskan district — a flashpoint for near-weekly clashes between security forces and Islamist demonstrators. Subsequent protests in the district were forcibly dispersed by police.

Demonstrations by supporters of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, ousted by the military in 2013, have largely waned amid a heavy security clampdown that has killed and injured thousands. In retaliation, Islamic militants have stepped up their attacks targeting mainly police and army soldiers — first in the lawless northeastern region of the Sinai Peninsula, and more recently in the heart of Cairo — killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers.

While another Sinai-based militant faction which recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, has claimed responsibility for the country’s deadliest attacks and suicide bombings, Ajnad Misr has regularly been carrying out less-deadly attacks that often target security forces heading to suppress demonstrations.

On Tuesday, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis released a video purporting to show the beheading of eight Bedouin men it accused of working for the Egyptian and Israeli armies.

The video, posted on the group’s Twitter account late on Monday, also showed what it said were victims of Egyptian military operations in the restive Sinai Peninsula, where an insurgency has killed scores of policemen and soldiers.

The jihadist group has released footage in the past showing the execution of alleged informants.

In the latest video, masked militants in camouflage behead eight men, some of them in broad daylight at a major thoroughfare in north Sinai.

The men were first made to confess they worked for the armies of Egypt and Israel, which borders the Sinai and has been attacked by fighters from the peninsula several times over the past three years.

The Egyptian military has poured troops and armor into the peninsula to quell the insurgency which picked up after the army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Despite the unprecedented deployment and repeated airstrikes, the jihadists have continued to stage large-scale attacks every few months.

Simultaneous attacks last month on military and police headquarters in north Sinai killed at least 30 people.

Most of them were soldiers killed when a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the army barracks in the provincial capital, El-Arish.