Egypt militant group claims killing police officer

An al-Qaeda-inspired militant group in Egypt has claimed responsibility for this week's assassination of a senior police officer in Cairo and a pipeline explosion in the volatile Sinai Peninsula.
     
Meanwhile, Interior Ministry spokesman Hani Abdel-Latif said two planted explosive devices detonated on Friday as a troop carrier drove by with riot police near the Cairo suburb of Giza. One officer was wounded in the attack, which also damaged the front window of the vehicle, said Abdel-Latif.
     
In two separate statements posted late Thursday, the Sinai militant group known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or Champions of Jerusalem, said it killed Maj. Gen. Mohammed el-Said and vowed more attacks against security forces.
     
El-Said was shot to death as he left his home in the Haram district of Giza, a neighborhood near the Pyramids, on Tuesday. He was an aide to the interior minister and head of the technical office in ministry, which is in charge of police.
     
The statement by the militant group described el-Said as "a renegade criminal" and warned the Egyptian military and police leaders to expect more attacks, telling them, to "await the worst as the time of punishment is close."
     
Separately, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis said it blew up a natural gas pipeline on Monday night south of the North Sinai city of el-Arish. The attack, it said, was part of its war against the "Egyptian regime's economy."
     
The statement claimed the millions of dollars the pipeline brings are used to line the "pockets of (army chief Abdel-Fattah) el-Sissi and his generals."
     
The authenticity of the statements could not be independently verified but they were posted on websites commonly used by militants.

Gas pipelines have repeatedly come under attacks since the 2011 downfall of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak and the security vacuum that ensued. There was an earlier attack in January, also on a Sinai gas pipeline.
     
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and Islamic militants based in the Sinai Peninsula have claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings and shootings targeting police across Egypt.
     
The government has blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that took power in Egypt in a series of elections during the year after Mubarak's ouster. Mohammed Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood, was elected president but was deposed in a military coup last July, after millions of Egyptians took to the streets for days to demand he leave office. The government has officially branded the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, but the group denies that claim.
     
Among the most prominent attacks claimed by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis was the failed assassination attempt on Egypt's interior minister last September.


AP