Cairo auto bomb wounds 6 police officers

An Egyptian government security building in Cairo was targeted in a auto bombing early Thursday where at least 29 people were injured in an attack claimed by the Islamic State.

Egyptian security officials have said a auto bomb exploded near a national security building in the Shubra neighborhood of Cairo suburb.

The driver fled on a motorcycle before the explosion, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

No-one has claimed responsibility but militants in Sinai sympathetic to ISIL, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria and has a presence in Egypt, have previously been behind attacks on security forces.

IS said “soldiers of the caliphate” had carried out the attack to avenge six convicted militants executed in May, according to an unverified statement circulated on IS-linked Twitter accounts and by jihadist monitoring group Site Intelligence.

The attack is one of a series of escalating assaults on security forces since Egypt’s first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi in 2013 by the military.

Health ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar said six policemen and 23 civilians had been wounded but none of the injuries were serious.

A massive auto bomb explosion took place Thursday targeting a national security building in Shubra el Khaima in the Qalioubiya province near Cairo.

The blast made a wide crater near the four-storey building, shattered its windows and destroyed a major part of the front portion of a surrounding wall, an AFP correspondent reported from the site.

The Cabinet approved the draft anti-terrorism law last month, two days after a auto bomb in an upscale Cairo neighborhood killed the country’s prosecutor general, Hisham Barakat.

Ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene, which was flooded with water from pipes broken by what authorities said was a blast from high explosives. The group found responsible in many attacks in Egypt.

Despite a military crackdown, mass death sentences, and widespread arrests, the government has not been able to quell the insurgency.

Experts said the group appeared to have changed its strategy in its fight against the Egyptian authorities.

There have been several terror attacks by Islamist militants in Cairo this year.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday slammed the new law.