CAIRO — Militants fired on a bus carrying police officers in a Cairo neighborhood on Sunday, killing eight of them, in an attack that was claimed by Egypt's Islamic State affiliate as well as another radical group that believes in armed resistance against the government.
It was the deadliest assault on security forces since November, when gunmen killed four police officers at a security checkpoint. In that attack, Wilayat Sinai, the local Islamic State branch, claimed responsibility. If it is also behind Sunday’s attack, it would further highlight the terrorist network’s capabilities of striking inside the Egyptian capital.
The Islamic State said in a statement on Twitter that “a carefully selected group of the soldiers of the caliphate” carried out the killings. It claimed that it seized weapons “as booty” and that the attack was in retaliation for the incarceration of women in “Egypt’s infidel prisons.”
In a separate statement on its Facebook page, the Popular Resistance Movement also claimed responsibility for Sunday’s killings. The group is a youth movement that opposes the government’s counterterrorism operations, which it says have included police brutality and harassment. It said the attack was to commemorate 1,000 days since Egyptian security forces massacred what human rights groups describe as hundreds of protesters in August 2013 at Rabaa Square in Cairo.
Neither of the statements could be independently verified, but they both bore the hallmarks of their respective militant groups.
Sunday's attack was all the more brazen because the capital has been heavily policed in recent weeks to stop demonstrators from rallying against the government of President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. Egyptian journalists have been protesting the arrest last week of two reporters who took refuge inside the journalist union's offices in downtown Cairo. And others have railed against Sissi's decision to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.
Hours after the killings, Egypt’s interior minister, Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, promised an investigation and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“These are the heroes of the police. Their blood is mixed with the dust every day, and they rise above all challenges,” Abdel Ghaffar told state television at the end of a military funeral for the eight officers. “We will continue our crusade against terrorism despite everything.”
“Our heads are raised high and our feet are solid on the ground. We will not be swayed by any attempt to destroy our efforts and our will to overcome,” he added.
At the brief funeral, the eight coffins wrapped in the Egyptian flag were hoisted atop red fire engines, accompanied by a few hundred mourners, including black-clad women wailing in grief.
Public frustration has been growing against the police ever since Sissi set in place one of the most repressive periods in Egypt’s modern history after the 2013 military overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. The security forces are accused of extrajudicial killings, torture and forced disappearances. Thousands of opponents of the regime have been jailed or placed under travel bans and other restrictions.
In the northern Sinai Peninsula, Egypt’s security forces have been battling the Islamic State affiliate, which has become increasingly sophisticated and daring in its attacks in recent months. But the vast majority of its assaults have targeted Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. Still, if Sunday’s attack is proved to be the affiliate’s handiwork, it could represent an intent to expand its reach.
In October, the affiliate claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula that killed all 224 onboard.
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