Egyptian riot policemen stand in front of the damaged national security building in northern Cairo’s district of Shubra Al-Kheima on August 20, 2015. (AFP PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKI)
At least 29 people, including 8 policemen, were injured after a car bomb went off outside the national security building in the early hours of Thursday in Shubra Al-Kheima, a working-class neighborhood in northern Cairo.
In an online statement, the Sinai Province, ISIS’s branch in Egypt, said it carried out the attack “in revenge for martyrs of Arab Sharkas,” referring to a group of six militants who were executed by the government in May for attacking soldiers near Cairo in 2014.
“Soldiers of the caliphate have managed to target a state security building in Shubra Al-Kheima in the heart of Cairo with a parked car bomb,” a Twitter account with links to the extremist group said on Thursday. The Sinai Province changed its name from Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis after it pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Since the removal of former president Mohamed Mursi from power in 2013, Egypt’s security and military forces have come under increased attacks by Islamist insurgents based out of the Sinai Peninsula.
The government of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi vowed to eradicate insurgency after the assassination of Hisham Barakat, the country’s top prosecutor, in June.
Maj. Gen. Abu Bakr Abdel-Kareem, the Egyptian Deputy Interior Minister for Media Affairs, attributed the recent rise in attacks on the government to “the preemptive strikes and successive successes by security forces against the terrorist elements.”
He also said the casualty toll from Thursday’s attack would have been much higher had it not been for the heightened security measures.
“The security measures around the [state security] building have succeeded in reducing the size of human losses,” Abdel-Kareem told Asharq Al-Awsat.
The interior ministry said in a statement that the bomber escaped on a motorcycle just before the explosion took place.
“The explosion has caused damage to the front windows, walls and part of the outer fence of the building,” the statement said.
Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab, who visited the scene of the blast on Thursday, called the attack “vile” and promised that attempts to cause chaos in Egypt would fail.