Three police killed in blast outside north Sinai hotel

CAIRO — At least three policemen were killed in a suicide car bombing on Tuesday outside a northern Sinai hotel hosting judges who had been overseeing Egypt’s parliamentary election, officials said.

Nine people were wounded in the blast outside the Swiss Inn hotel in el-Arish, the provincial capital of north Sinai where Islamists are waging an insurgency, state media reported.

The driver attempted to crash the car into the hotel before security forces opened fire on him, causing the car to explode, security sources said. At least two judges were among the injured, authorities added.

State television aired footage of shattered hotel windows and a charred limb, and car parts flung into a hotel terrace by the blast.

Egypt held its second round of parliamentary elections on Sunday and Monday, its first legislative vote since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.

Morsi’s ouster unleashed a deadly police crackdown on his followers, and fueled an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

Jihadists there who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.

They have also claimed responsibility for bombing a Russian passenger plane after it left the south Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31, killing all 224 people on board.

Unlike the north of the peninsula, which has become a jihadist stronghold and is off limits to tourists, south Sinai is dotted with heavily secured Red Sea resorts.

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