Car exploded outside national security agency building, injuring six police, in attack claimed by Sinai Province of the Islamic State

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Islamic State-affiliated militants in Egypt have claimed responsibility for an explosion at a Cairo security building that left 29 people wounded.



The claim came in a message circulated on social media stamped with a logo reading “Islamic State, Egypt.” Isis insurgents based in Sinai have claimed a series of similar bombings in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt.

The blast occurred just before 2am close to the national security agency building in Shubra al-Khaima, a neighbourhood on the northern edge of the Egyptian capital. The sound of the explosion echoed across Cairo, rattling windows and waking residents miles from the blast.

Part of the building’s concrete facade was blown off, and adjacent apartment buildings were also damaged, with shattered windows and twisted metal railings dangling from balconies. Shattered glass was scattered across the pavement.

Egypt’s interior ministry said in a statement that a car had exploded outside the security compound. The assailant fled the scene on a motorcycle, it said.

The Isis message said the attack was in retribution for the “martyrs of Arab Sharkas” a reference to a group of six men who were hanged in May after being convicted in a military trial denounced by human rights groups as flawed.

According to their lawyer and relatives, three of the men could not have participated in the attack for which they were on trial and were already in custody when it was carried out.

The six men were also accused of belonging to Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the group that later declared itself to be the Sinai Province of the Islamic State when it affiliated with Isis.

There has been an increase in insurgent attacks in Egypt in recent months. In late June the country’s chief prosecutor was assassinated in a daylight bombing in the capital.

Insurgents based in the Sinai peninsula have launched attacks in Egypt for years. Those attacks accelerated in 2013 following the military’s removal of the elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Over the last two years the insurgents have focused the majority of their attacks on Egypt’s police and military. In December 2013 a bombing partly destroyed a security headquarters in the Nile delta city of Mansoura, north of Cairo. In January 2014 a powerful bomb targeted the security directorate in Cairo.

Both attacks were claimed by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a Sinai-based armed group that later declared itself a branch of Islamic State.



This week new anti-terrorism legislation took effect that critics say will muzzle political opponents and the news media. The law establishes special courts, stipulates harsh penalties for offences defined as terrorism-related crimes, and imposes fines for journalists who contradict the state’s account of an attack.