Egypt: Explosion kills two senior police officers in Cairo

A bomb blast outside Egypt’s Foreign Ministry killed at least two high-ranking police officers Sunday, breaking a nearly three-month lull in major attacks in the Egyptian capital.

Two police lieutenant colonels were killed and six lower-level officers were wounded in the explosion, which reverberated across a busy Nile-side district, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Hours later, a military jet crashed in Fayyoum province, about 70 miles southwest of Cairo, leaving six people dead and one person injured, state media reported. The military blamed a malfunction and said the crash was under investigation.

The Cairo blast, apparently targeting a police checkpoint behind the Foreign Ministry, was powerful enough to topple a tree, which landed on a parked car. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but at least two different Islamic militant groups have been implicated in previous attacks in the capital.

Egyptian security forces have been battling an Islamic insurgency in the Sinai peninsula, but on occasion, groups taking part in that struggle strike targets in the Egyptian heartland, usually targeting security installations. The Sinai campaign has left hundreds of police officers and soldiers dead.

The bombing came as President Abdel Fattah Sisi, who has promised to continue Egypt’s harsh crackdown on Islamist groups, headed to New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly. It marked Sisi’s first visit to the United States since taking office more than three months ago.

Twitter: @laurakingLAT