A roadside bomb went off Friday in Egypt’s volatile Sinai Peninsula killing a police officer and injuring three others, a security official said. The explosion occurred when a police armoured vehicle hit the bomb in al-Arish, the capital city of northern Sinai, the official added on condition of anonymity.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, explosives experts defused a bomb next to a hotel in the city of Giza, famed for the Pyramids, according to a report, no casualties were recorded in the attack. Both incidents occurred days after the start of two-round parliamentary elections, Egypt’s first since the army’s 2013 overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
Egypt has since seen a surge in attacks mostly against security forces, mainly in Sinai where a group loyal to the Islamic State extremist militia had claimed most of the assaults. However, Egyptian authorities have blamed the violence on Morsi’s now-banned Muslim Brotherhood but the Islamist group denied the accusation, accusing the government of oppression.
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