The supremacist attacks from the northern Sinai Peninsula have also spread to the rest of the country
Cairo explosion: two policemen killed pursuing bomber
An explosion in Cairo on Monday killed two policemen who were chasing a man believed to have planted a device last week near a mosque, Egypt’s interior ministry said.
The blast in the Darb Al Ahmar district of central Cairo also killed the man the police were chasing. Three other policemen were wounded.
“As security surrounded the man and was set to arrest and control him, an explosive device in his possession went off,” the ministry said.
It said the man was pursued as part of an investigation into the attempted bombing of a security detail stationed near a mosque in Giza on Friday.
Security defused that device, the ministry said.
Egypt has been battling an extremist insurgency which surged following the 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.
The attacks have mainly been in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula but have also spread to the rest of the country.
In December, three Vietnamese tourists and their Egyptian guide died when a home-made bomb exploded on their bus on the outskirts of Cairo.
Egypt’s security forces launched a major operation in February last year focused on the Sinai Peninsula, to wipe out an ISIS affiliate.
On Saturday, an attack on an Egyptian army checkpoint in Sinai left 15 soldiers dead or wounded and seven of the suspected militant assailants killed, according to the military.
