Two Military Cadets Killed in Egypt Bombing
Two Egyptian military cadets were killed in a bombing north of Cairo on Wednesday as they waited to board a bus, officials said.
The blast struck in the Nile Valley city of Kafr al-Sheikh and wounded 10 other people, police officials said.
Scores of policemen and soldiers have been killed in attacks since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
Most have taken place in the Sinai Peninsula, where the Islamic State group's affiliate in Egypt is based.
Other attacks have targeted policemen and soldiers in the capital and the Nile Delta.
Kafr el-Sheikh governor Osama Hamdi Abdel Wahid told the private CBC Extra news station that he could confirm two cadets had been killed.
The bombing took place outside the city's football stadium where the cadets were waiting for their bus, he said.
Though facing stiff resistance from jihadists in Sinai, police have killed and detained many militants in Cairo and Nile Delta.
Yet small-scale attacks continue. Earlier this month a bombing on a Cairo bridge killed a policeman and wounded two people.
Hours later police announced they had killed the leader of the group Ajnad Misr, which took responsibility for that attack and others in Cairo.
Ajnad Misr acknowledged their leader had died in a shoot-out in the capital and named a new commander.
The group has said it carries out its attacks in retaliation for the deaths of hundreds of Islamist protesters in the past two years.
After the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, authorities unleashed an extensive crackdown on his supporters that left hundreds dead and thousands in prison.
Civilian and military courts have sentenced dozens of people to death, although only one sentence has been carried out so far, by hanging.
Morsi himself could face the gallows if convicted in one of his trials on charges of espionage with foreign powers and collusion to carry out attacks with militants before he became the country's first democratically elected president in 2012.
Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest political movement before his overthrow, has been designated a terrorist group although it denies it is violent.
But some of its members are believed to have resorted to plotting attacks on policemen after the crackdown drove them underground.
In the Sinai peninsula, jihadists affiliated to IS have killed scores of security personnel, including at least 14 people in attacks last week, most of them policemen.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://cdn.naharnet.com/stories/en/175587 |