Police officer Mohamed Refaat from the Qalyubia Security Directorate was killed Monday after unknown assailants fired at his police car and shot him on the Ring Road in the Al-Khousos district.
The Ministry of Interior said Refaat was inside the car near a checkpoint on the Ring Road when the car was fired at. Another two officers, Khaled Al-Sayyed and Hassan Hassan, were injured in the attack.
The drive-by shooting was executed by assailants in two cars, slightly differing from previous attacks where the assailants use motorcycles to fire at checkpoints.
No militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, some local media outlets reported that the attack was executed by members of El-Doksh criminal gang, which has been hunted down by Egyptian police over the past two months.
The motives behind the attack are still unclear, the media office of the ministry said Monday.
The ministry said a delegation from the Qalyubia Security Directorate went to investigate the body in the hospital’s morgue. A team from the prosecution and the forensic medicine departments also arrived at the scene of the crime to interrogate witnesses and begin the investigation.
Shootings, mainly targeting police and army officers as well as state officials, have become a near-weekly occurrence in Egypt since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
