Blast kills Egypt's top prosecutor

Islamic militant group claims responsibility for car bombing

An Egyptian policeman stands guard Monday after a bomb attack by Islamic militants targeted the convoy of Egypt’s Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat in the Heliopolis district of Cairo. Barakat was killed in the attack.
An Egyptian policeman stands guard Monday after a bomb attack by Islamic militants targeted the convoy of Egypt’s Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat in the Heliopolis district of Cairo. Barakat was killed in the attack.

CAIRO -- A car bomb killed Egypt's top prosecutor on Monday, ripping through his convoy in a Cairo neighborhood, in the first assassination of a top official in the country in a quarter-century.

The attack marked an apparent escalation by Islamic militants in their campaign of revenge attacks for a two-year crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hisham Barakat led the wide-scale prosecution against figures from the Brotherhood and other Islamists, including former President Mohammed Morsi, who was ousted by the military in July 2013. The crackdown against the group has seen the courts handing down mass death sentences against Morsi and other Islamists.

Militants, who for years had been fighting in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, widened their insurgency after the military's ouster of Morsi, which was prompted by massive protests against his rule. Egyptian authorities accuse the Brotherhood of involvement in the violence and have branded it a terror group, a claim the group denies.

Militant attacks have focused on police and the military, but in recent months have turned to target the judiciary, with the killings of several judges in Sinai earlier this year.

The killing also recalled one of Egypt's darkest chapters -- the 1990s, when Islamic militant groups and state security apparatus were engaged in score-settling killings for nearly a decade. In 1990, militants gunned down then-parliament speaker Rifaat el-Mahgoub in downtown Cairo -- the last time a senior official was assassinated, though they made multiple subsequent attempts against other ministers until the insurgency was crushed in the late 1990s.

Monday's attack took place when a car laden with a large amount of explosives was detonated by remote control as Barakat's car and his entourage passed through the eastern Cairo district of Heliopolis, security officials said.

The 65-year-old Barakat received multiple shrapnel wounds in the shoulder, chest and liver, according to a medical official at the nearby Nozha hospital. His two guards and five other people were also wounded by the explosion, officials said.

Hours after the attack, his death was announced after he underwent surgery, according to Egypt's state news agency MENA.

A senior security official said that initial investigation showed that Islamic militants along with the Muslim Brotherhood group are behind the attack. Pro-government TV networks immediately blamed the Brotherhood.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Hours later, a lesser-known Egyptian militant group calling itself Popular Resistance in Giza claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statement posted on its Facebook page, with photographs from the site of the bombing. It said it had planted an explosive device under Barakat's car.

The claim could not be independently verified. Security officials said the bomb was not under the prosecutor's car. Several groups with the "Popular Resistance" name have claimed responsibility for smaller attacks, mainly targeting the police and power stations.

The attack came as Egyptian security forces were already on high alert on the eve of the second anniversary of massive anti-Islamist demonstrations that paved the way, days later, for the military's ouster of Morsi.

Two years ago on June 30, millions of Egyptians took to the streets demanding that the Islamist Morsi step down over allegations that he abused power in favor of his Muslim Brotherhood group. The rallies continued until, days later, the military stepped in, removed Morsi from power and jailed him at an unknown location.

Morsi's supporters responded with a campaign of street protests that frequently descended into violence. In the ensuring crackdown, security forces killed hundreds and detained tens of thousands.

Since then, authorities have carried out mass trials and handed down death sentences to hundreds of suspects. This has brought the Egyptian judiciary and officials under international criticism. They have also been targeted in attacks by Islamic militants.

The attack on Barakat is the first major assassination attempt on a high government official since a 2013 suicide bombing targeting then-Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim. Egypt's main Islamic militant group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis -- which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State extremists fighting in Iraq and Syria -- has claimed responsibility for that attack.

Information for this article was contributed by Maamoun Youssef of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/30/2015

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