Cairo: A suicide bomber detonated a car full of explosives at the main gate of a police club in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula early on Wednesday, killing at least three police and wounding 10 others in an attack claimed by Daesh.
Five of the wounded in the attack in the city of Al Arish were civilians and five were police, state news agency Mena reported, citing an unnamed Interior Ministry source.
Egyptian security forces have for years battled a burgeoning Islamist militant insurgency in the area which is now led by a local affiliate of the extremist Daesh. The fighting has surged since the army overthrew an Islamist president in 2013, with hundreds of security forces killed since then and several major suicide attacks and raids on state security buildings last summer.
A statement signed by the “Sinai Province” of Daesh and circulated on social media by militant sympathisers said the bombing was in response to the “government’s arrest of women from the tribes of Sinai.” It said the bomber, Abu Aisha Al Masry, killed “dozens” at the officers’ club. The claim could not be independently verified.
Casualty figures are difficult to track in the area, where reporting by journalists is highly restricted.
Al Arish is about 70 kilometres north of where a Russian passenger plane crashed on Saturday, killing all 224 people on-board. The cause is under investigation. Daesh claimed it “brought down” the plane, but offered no evidence.
President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi has said the security situation in Sinai is under “full control,” and that Daesh claims are “propaganda” aimed at damaging the Egypt’s image.
