Egypt Police Kill Cairo Bombing Suspect

Egyptian police on Tuesday shot dead a militant suspected of being involved in a January bomb attack against Cairo police headquarters, the interior ministry said.

The bombing in the heart of the capital, one of many attacks targeting security forces since the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July, had killed four people.

Mohamed al-Sayed Mansour al-Toukhi was killed in a gun battle with policemen when they came to arrest him in an eastern Cairo neighborhood, the ministry said.

His killing comes a day after police said they had arrested a man suspected of being involved in one of the four bombings on January 24 that rocked Cairo a day before the third anniversary of the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

An al-Qaida inspired group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), had claimed the bombing of the police headquarters.

The group has also claimed most of the deadliest attacks in Egypt since Morsi's ouster, saying they were carried out as revenge against an ongoing government crackdown on his Islamist supporters.

Amnesty International says more than 1,400 people have been killed in the crackdown and thousands jailed.

Egyptian prosecutors meanwhile referred to trial four suspected al-Qaida militants, including a Kurd, accusing them of planning attacks against the French and American embassies in Cairo, state news agency MENA reported.

The four are also accused of setting up a "terrorist group" to attack police and army personnel and Coptic churches, and of providing al-Qaida militants in Pakistan with information about Egyptian troops in the restive Sinai Peninsula, MENA reported.