CAIRO: A recently emerged Egyptian militant group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in Cairo on Friday that killed six policemen and wounded three others.
The Hasm Movement, which has claimed several attacks in Egypt in recent months, said it set off the bomb which security sources said also injured four civilians.
The attack, at a police checkpoint on a main road that leads to the Pyramids, was the latest in a series of security incidents in Egypt claimed by radical Islamists.
The policemen were either in or near their car when the device went off, the security sources said.
The interior ministry said a security cordon had been thrown around the scene of the attack near a mosque.
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Deeb described a scene of carnage, with dead and dying policemen lying next to wrecked cars. One of the policemen had blast fragments in his chest and two more had lost legs, he told Reuters Television.
Saudi Arabia condemned the terrorist action and expressed condolences to the families of the victims.
Security forces killed three gunmen on Tuesday in a raid on a hideout in southern Egypt they said was used by Hasm, which they described as an armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sinai insurgency
Hasm, the Arabic word for decisiveness, has accused judges of sentencing thousands of innocent defendants to death, or jailing them for life, at the behest of the military.
Egyptian judges have issued death sentences against hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters since 2013, when President Mohamed Mursi, a member of the group, was overthrown by the army and arrested.
The Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s first free elections after the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30 years in power, has since been banned and its leaders and members have largely been imprisoned or driven into exile or underground.
Since the crackdown, other small groups, including Hasm, have emerged. Hasm claimed responsibility in September for an assassination attempt on a senior prosecutor.
Militants loyal to Daesh are meanwhile waging an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, killing hundreds of soldiers and police.
Judges, policemen and senior officials have been targeted by radical Islamists angered by long prison sentences imposed on members of the Brotherhood.
Militants claim Cairo blast that killed six police
Militants claim Cairo blast that killed six police
Family of Palestinian-American shot dead by Israeli settler demand accountability
- Relatives say Abu Siyam was among about 30 residents from the village of Mukhmas who confronted armed settlers attempting to steal goats from the community
LONDON: The family of a 19-year-old Palestinian-American man reportedly shot dead by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank have demanded accountability, amid mounting scrutiny over a surge in settler violence and a lack of prosecutions.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam, a US citizen born in Philadelphia, was killed near the city of Ramallah on Wednesday, becoming at least the sixth American citizen to die in incidents involving Israeli settlers or soldiers in the territory in the past two years.
Relatives say Abu Siyam was among about 30 residents from the village of Mukhmas who confronted armed settlers attempting to steal goats from the community. Witnesses said that stones were thrown by both sides before settlers opened fire, wounding at least three villagers.
Abu Siyam was struck and later died of his injuries.
Abdulhamid Siyam, the victim’s cousin, said the killing reflected a wider pattern of impunity.
“A young man of 19 shot and killed in cold blood, and no responsibility,” he told the BBC. “Impunity completely.”
The US State Department said that it was aware of the death of a US citizen and was “carefully monitoring the situation,” while the Trump administration said that it stood ready to provide consular assistance.
The Israeli embassy in Washington said the incident was under review and that an operational inquiry “must be completed as soon as possible.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces said troops were deployed to the scene and used “riot dispersal means to restore order,” adding that no IDF gunfire was reported.
The military confirmed that the incident remained under review and said that a continued presence would be maintained in the area to prevent further unrest.
Palestinians and human rights organizations say such reviews rarely lead to criminal accountability, arguing that Israeli authorities routinely fail to prosecute settlers accused of violence.
A US embassy spokesperson later said that Washington “condemns this violence,” as international concern continues to grow over conditions in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians and human rights groups say Israeli authorities routinely fail to investigate or prosecute settlers accused of violence against civilians.
Those concerns were echoed this week by the UN, which warned that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank may amount to ethnic cleansing.
A UN human rights office report on Thursday said that Israeli settlement expansion, settler attacks and military operations have increasingly displaced Palestinian communities, with dozens of villages reportedly emptied since the start of the Gaza war.
The report also criticized Israeli military tactics in the northern West Bank, saying that they resembled warfare and led to mass displacement, while noting abuses by Palestinian security forces, including the use of unnecessary lethal force and the intimidation of critics.
Neither Israel’s foreign ministry nor the Palestinian Authority has commented on the findings.
