Bomb Kills 2 Policemen Near Egypt Foreign Ministry

At least two policemen were killed Sunday in a bombing near a checkpoint outside Egypt's foreign ministry headquarters, officials said, shattering a months-long respite from deadly attacks in Cairo.

The blast brought down a tree onto a car, meters (yards) from a pool of blood where one victim had fallen, an Agence France-Presse correspondent said.

The explosion came hours after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who has battled militants since he overthrew the ruling Islamists last year, left for New York for the U.N. General Assembly where he is expected to discuss militancy in the region.

Two lieutenant colonels died and nine people were wounded by the improvised device, the interior and health ministries said.

Police cordoned off the scene in a crowded district of central Cairo along the Nile River, and searched with sniffer dogs for more bombs.

One of the officers, Mohamed Mahmud Abu Sarie, had testified in a court case on a prison break involving ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2011, when he was an opposition leader jailed by former strongman Hosni Mubarak, a security official said.

It was unclear whether Abu Sarie had been targeted over his role in the trial.

The militant group Ajnad Misr claimed the bombing, saying it was defending "the oppressed" and was in retaliation for a government crackdown on Morsi supporters.

The bombing targeted "the forces of the criminal security apparatuses... to give them a taste of what they do to Muslims," the group said in a statement on Twitter.

"Vengeance operations being carried out by a blessed group from this proud people will not stop."

Militants have killed scores of policemen since the military toppled Morsi in July 2013.

In the past, they have set off several bombs in succession to target first responders after an attack.

Two police bomb disposal experts were killed trying to defuse devices outside the presidential palace in June, the last major attack in the capital before Sunday's explosion.

The attack came days after Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim held a news conference to announce the killing and arrest of several Islamist militants.

"It is a cowardly act and a political message but it won't hinder the progress of the Egyptian people," Cairo governor Galal Said told AFP near the scene of the explosion.

Some passers-by gathered around, chanting "The people demand the execution of the Brotherhood," referring to Morsi's now-banned Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Ajnad Misr has claimed previous Cairo bombings, saying it was avenging more than 1,400 pro-Morsi protesters killed in street clashes with police after the Islamist's ouster and detention.

Jihadists are mostly based in the restive Sinai Peninsula, but have established cells in Cairo and the Nile Delta.

Police say they have disrupted many of the militant cells on the mainland but the elusive Sinai jihadists still regularly target policemen and soldiers in the mountainous and desert region bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The main jihadist group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, last week claimed the killing of six policemen with a roadside bomb that destroyed their armored vehicle.

The attack came days after another powerful roadside bomb killed 11 policemen in Sinai.

Protests in support of Morsi in Cairo and other Delta cities have started to give way to attacks on police amid a sweeping police crackdown that has netted thousands of Islamist activists.

The government says the Muslim Brotherhood, designated a terrorist group after Morsi's overthrow, is responsible for the attacks. The group insists it is peaceful.

But with their scattered protests swiftly quashed by police, some Brotherhood members and their allies are believed to have turned to attacking policemen, often using firebombs to target vehicles.

The government has compared its battle against the militants with the mounting U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, arguing the Islamists operate under one ideological umbrella.

The deadliest threat to the authorities comes from extreme Islamist militant groups like Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which says it wants to implement Islamic law.

The group, which includes militants who fought alongside jihadists in Syria, have bombed two police headquarters and tried to assassinate the interior minister last year using a suicide bomber.