Ministry: Two policemen killed in blast in central Cairo

Egyptian riot police block access to the street where the body of a suicide bomber lay covered in a sheet behind al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo on February 19, 2019. – An explosion in Cairo killed two policemen who were chasing a man believed to have targeted security staff near a mosque last week, Egypt’s interior ministry said. “As security surrounded the man and was set to arrest and control him, an explosive device in his possession went off,” the ministry said. The blast in the crowded Darb al-Ahmar district in downtown Cairo also killed the bomber and injured three other policemen. (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Two policemen were killed and three wounded when an explosive device carried by a militant they were pursuing detonated in the heart of the Egyptian capital on Monday, an interior ministry statement said, Reuters reports.

According to the ministry, security forces were pursuing the man in the search for the perpetrator of an attempted attack against a police patrol in western Cairo on Friday.

After catching the suspect in Cairo’s ancient Islamic district close to the Al Azhar mosque, “one of the explosive devices in his possession exploded, causing the death of the terrorist and the martyrdom of a police officer from national security and an officer from Cairo investigations (department)”, the statement said.

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At least three civilians were also wounded, including a Thai student who suffered light injuries, security sources said. The area around Al Azhar mosque is home to crowded markets and is a popular tourist destination.

State television broadcast a black-and-white photo of the suspect, whom it identified as 37-year-old Al-Hassan Abdullah.

Friday’s attempted attack left two police officers and three civilians with minor injuries when a home-made bomb exploded during an effort to defuse it, security sources said at the time.

Egyptian security forces have been waging a campaign against Islamist militants over the past year focussed on Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. On Saturday the Egyptian military said 15 of its personnel had been killed in a clash in North Sinai in which seven militants were also killed.

Attacks in the capital are relatively rare, though a roadside bomb in Giza killed three Vietnamese tourists and an Egyptian guide in December.

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