3 Egyptian police officers killed in shooting in Suez Canal city on Friday, following years of attacks concentrated in Sinai
The Islamic State jihadist group said Saturday that it had carried out a deadly attack on an Egyptian police checkpoint in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia the previous day.
“A cell of soldiers of the caliphate managed to attack an Egyptian police roadblock… with a machine gun,” the jihadist group’s Amaq news agency said.
Three Egyptian policemen were killed in the attack, the first of its kind in nearly three years in mainland Egypt, which has largely been spared the deadly insurgency in the nearby Sinai peninsula.
In the past few years, attacks against Egyptian security forces have been concentrated in the Sinai, where jihadists affiliated with IS operate.
Eleven soldiers were killed on May 7 in an attack in western Sinai.
Ismailia is one of the key cities overlooking Egypt’s Suez Canal, a vital waterway between Asia and Europe that sees about 10 percent of the world’s maritime trade.
Source : Times Of Israel
