AFP/Cairo
A bomb exploded outside the gates of Cairo University yesterday, an Egyptian police official said, wounding at least nine people including a senior officer.
The assistant police chief of Cairo’s Giza district was moderately wounded, as were six policemen stationed outside the campus to quell protests and three civilian passersby, an interior ministry official said.
Police cordoned off the area and scoured it with sniffer dogs.
Scores of policemen and soldiers have been killed in militant attacks, mainly in the Sinai Peninsula, after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last year and crushed his supporters.
Yesterday’s blast occurred near the site of a bombing in April that killed a police general, and where riot policemen are stationed on foot and in armoured vehicles to confront frequent protests by pro-Islamist students.
Police had clashed with students earlier in the day, an official said.
April’s attack was claimed by Ajnad Misr, a militant Islamist group that has killed several policemen in bombings around Cairo.
The group has said its attacks were in response to the deadly crackdown on Mursi’s supporters that left hundreds dead in street clashes and thousands in jail.
It pledged retaliation last week after police quashed protests in several universities across the country.
A student at Alexandria University later died of gunshot wounds sustained during the clashes.
The group also claimed responsibility for bombing a checkpoint outside the foreign ministry last month that killed two policemen.
And a bombing on October 15 wounded 12 civilians near a main court complex. Ajnad Misr condemned that attack, saying it only targets security personnel.
The authorities have blamed Mursi’s now blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood for the violence, although the group insists that it is committed to peaceful protests.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief who overthrew Mursi and was subsequently elected, has vowed to eradicate the Islamist movement, which continues to hold small protests.
Police said yesterday they arrested 12 pro-Brotherhood students in campus clashes.
It is thought that more Brotherhood-linked activists are embracing militant tactics as police squeeze the protests, which are often swiftly dispersed.
At least 15,000 Islamists have been arrested on suspicion of protesting or participating in violence since Mursi’s overthrow.
More than 200 have been sentenced to death for taking part in deadly riots in August 2013, after police killed hundreds of pro-Mursi protesters in clashes in Cairo.
Mursi himself is standing several trials on charges ranging from espionage to militancy, and could be sentenced to death if convicted.
A court jailed 25 men yesterday for from seven years to life for planning “terrorist attacks” on state institutions during Mursi’s presidency.
The accused, members of the so-called “Nasr City Cell”, were arrested in 2012 after an exchange of fire in Cairo’s upscale district of Nasr City.
Mohamed Jamal, one of those sentenced to life, is listed as a “terrorist individual” by the United Nations and the US State Department for his alleged links to Al Qaeda.
The United Nations says Jamal is the leader of the Nasr City Cell.
The State Department says he travelled to Afghanistan in the late 1980s, where he trained with Al Qaeda and learned how to construct bombs.
The Cairo court handed down 12 life sentences, including three to people tried in absentia. A life sentence in Egypt amounts to 25 years.
People help an injured man at the scene of the explosion outside Cairo University yesterday.
