Egypt’s assistant prosecutor has survived an assassination attempt when a car bomb exploded in an eastern suburb of Cairo as his motorcade was passing by on Thursday evening, an interior ministry statement said, reported Reuters.
The assistant prosecutor general, Zakaria Abdel Aziz,, was on his way from his office in Rehab to his home in New Cairo when a private car that was parked on the side of the road exploded.
The interior ministry said that Abdel Aziz and his entourage were unharmed while one passerby was wounded and taken to hospital. Security sources had earlier said two people were hurt.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Since the military coup in 2013 that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt is facing violence and instability with the rise of insurgency led by Sinai Province -a group affiliated to the Islamic State(ISIS) in the Sinai Peninsula.
The Sinai Province carried many operations that killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers in checkpoints and military camps. There have also been attacks in Cairo and other cities.
In the same context, the former general prosecutor of Egypt, Hisham Barakat, was assassinated by a car bomb in June last year as his motorcade passed by near his home – the most senior state official to die at the hands of militants since the military coup in mid-2013 led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
In the same context, Egypt’s former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa survived an assassination attempt when two men on a motorcycle reportedly fired at him as he entered a mosque last month. Gomaa is an outspoken critic of Islamist groups and one of the major supporter to al-Sisi regime.
A senior security source quoted by the state MENA news agency said early investigations indicated about 20 kg worth of TNT was packed in the car and detonated remotely using a mobile phone.
Photographs from the scene showed the charred remains of a vehicle, with shards of glass and metal littering the ground. Police sealed off the area.
