Police officer, soldier shot dead in Cairo suburb

World Saturday 09/January/2016 18:43 PM
By: Times News Service
Police officer, soldier shot dead in Cairo suburb

Cairo: Armed men shot dead a police officer and a soldier on Saturday while they were in their car in the Giza area, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt's state news agency said.
"Immediately after the incident several moving and fixed checkpoints were deployed in the Muneeb area in order to crack down on the attackers and catch them," a security source was quoted as saying by the state news agency.
IS militants claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on messaging service Telegram.
Egypt is fighting a wave of militancy against security forces which started in the remote regions of the Sinai, but is increasingly spreading closer to the capital and focusing on targets previously considered safe such tourist resorts on the Red Sea.
On Friday two armed assailants attacked a hotel in Egypt's Red Sea resort town of Hurgada, wounding three foreign tourists. The Interior Ministry had said that one of the attackers was a student from Giza.
The armed men wounded two Austrian tourists and a Swede.
Security forces shot and killed at least one of the attackers after they stormed the beachside Bella Vista hotel, officials said, though there was no immediate information on the other, or on the condition of the tourists.
Security sources said the attackers had arrived by sea and also carried a gun and a suicide belt. Officials said officers had tightened checks across the area and shut off roads.
Norwegian Jon Torp told Norwary's VG newspaper that he heard at least 24 shots as the attackers moved around the hotel.
"I was in my room when I heard someone shouting. I went out on the balcony and could see a man wave a black flag with white writings on it. He was yelling loudly," Torp told VG.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Security sources had earlier said two tourists had been injured, one from Germany and one from Denmark.
But the Swedish Foreign Ministry confirmed that one Swede was injured and Expressen newspaper quoted the victim's father as saying he was "fine" in hospital.
IS said on Friday it had carried out an attack on Israeli tourists in Cairo on Thursday.
Security sources said those tourists were Israeli Arabs.
Tourism is critical to the Egyptian economy as a source of hard currency, but has been ravaged by years of political turmoil since the protests that ousted veteran president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.