Egyptian police thwart double car bomb attack
Officers fire at suspicious vehicles approaching police station, which promptly explode, with no casualties to security forces
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EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) — Police in Egypt say they have thwarted two suicide car bomb attacks on a police station in the restive northern Sinai.
Police officials said Saturday the attack in the town of Sheikh Zuweyid wounded two police officers.
They said guards in the police station’s towers fired at the cars, which exploded before reaching the building. The explosion shattered windows and damaged parts of the police station and some surrounding houses.
The officials said an investigation into the attack has begun. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.
On Friday an explosive device struck a police patrol in the Egyptian capital, 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.
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.
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.
The Times of Israel Community.