ISIL claims Cairo courthouse bomb wounding 29

Egypt’s interior ministry said that a auto had exploded outside the police building, which houses a centre for investigating threats to national security, in the early hours of Thursday morning. Its homegrown status likely makes it more attentive to local sentiment. Wrecked cars stood around the building, as Kalashnikov-wielding security forces patrolled the streets and set up roadblocks to ward off hysterical residents. The building’s windows were blown out and its facade was left cracked and crumbling, while parts of a wall surrounding it were destroyed. A statement circulated on Twitter by supporters said it was a reprisal for the execution of six of its members previous year.

ISIS announced its involvement in the explosion in a public broadcast over the Al-Bayan radio station where it claimed that the “soldiers of the caliphate” had carried out the attack.

According to Human Rights Watch, the six men, along with three others, were convicted in 2014 for attacking security forces and killing two military officers in a shootout.

The attack seems to have been a vehicle bomb, and suggests that Sinai Peninsula is only getting more adept at using them.

Putin visited Egypt in February, his first visit to the country in a decade.

Inside his ruined clinic next door to the security building, plastic surgeon Gawad Mahoud said: “We were here painting the office, and then it went off. It was like an natural disaster, it blew the doors off and smashed all the windows in”. “We are not living in a normal state here, the way this place is run”.

The cause of the blast was not immediately known. At the site, press credentials of the few foreign journalists who managed to arrive were checked repeatedly by authorities. But Egypt’s military, led by Mr. el-Sissi, was impatient at no longer heading the government and overthrew Mr. Morsi. Hundreds have been killed and thousands jailed. Journalists might be fined for reporting that contradicts Defence Ministry statements.

Stabilising Egypt is critical to efforts to rebuild an economy hurt by turmoil since the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Analysts and scholars say the broad, heavy-handed crackdown on dissent which involves alleged torture, forced disappearances and mysterious deaths in police custody, is generating not only resentment, but extremism, possibly driving some to violence.

The consulate bombing was followed by the abduction and apparent beheading of Croatian engineer Tomislav Salopek, which the ISIL-affiliated Sinai Province group claimed on August 13.