A police sergeant and a passerby were killed by unknown assailants Friday morning, within hours after an explosion outside a police club, which injured several police personnel.
The deceased police sergeant was on his way to work in a police station in the Upper Egypt city, Minya when unknown masked men on a motorcycle fired at him, state-run MENA reported. He and a citizen passing by the incident were killed during the shooting.
The Minya shooting comes after an improvised explosive device exploded Thursday outside a police club in Tanta, a Nile Delta city and the capital of Gharbeya governorate. The explosion left five police personnel injured. Gharbeya Security Director Osama Bideir was cited by MENA as saying that the perpetrators will “not escape justice”.
The explosive device was placed next to a garbage bin outside the club.
Last week, 11 security personnel were killed after their security convoy hit a landmine on a road in North Sinai. Sinai-based militant group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.
The ouster of former president and Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohamed Morsi was followed by a surge in attacks and bombings targeting security forces, whether police or military.
Attacks at first were centred in Sinai, but eventually spread to other parts of the country, reaching Mansoura in December and Cairo in January with two deadly explosions outside security buildings.
While at first attackers used explosions, drive-by shootings have become a trend in recent months.
More than a dozen police officers have been killed in drive-by attacks in the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqeya alone. Almost all of these attacks were perpetrated by armed men on motorcycles, striking police officers on their way home from work.
On 9 September, two militants belonging to Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis were killed in an army raid. The Egyptian military has been carrying out raids and operations as part of an ongoing security effort to tackle militant activity in the Sinai Peninsula. The raids have intensified since the convoy bombing last week.
After the bombing, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi vowed to counter the group’s existence in the Sinai Peninsula.
