Jihadist Group Claims Egypt Police HQ Suicide Bombing

An al-Qaida-inspired group based in Egypt's Sinai Wednesday claimed a suicide car bombing of a police headquarters north of Cairo that killed 15 people, the deadliest such attack since Mohammed Morsi's overthrow.

The brazen assault underscored the military's challenge to contain Sinai militants who have killed more than 100 soldiers and policemen in a wave of attacks since the army ousted Islamist president Morsi on July 3.

"Your brothers in Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, with the grace of God, were able to target the Daqhaleya police headquarters," the group said of Tuesday's attack, in a statement posted on Islamist forums.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber identified as "Abu Maryam."

Authorities say there are links between the Sinai jihadists and Morsi's more moderate Muslim Brotherhood movement, but have offered no proof.

Morsi and top Brotherhood leaders, imprisoned in a crackdown following his overthrow, are charged with colluding with militant groups to launch attacks in the country.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, whose name in English means "Partisans of Jerusalem", had previously claimed credit for bombings in Sinai and the attempted assassination by a suicide car bomber of interior minister Mohammed Ibrahim in Cairo in September.

The group warned soldiers and policemen to abandon their posts "to preserve their religion and lives."

It said it carried out Tuesday's attack in response to the "apostate regime's war on Islamic sharia, its shedding of Muslim blood and violation of our women's and sisters' honor."

An interior ministry official told Agence France Presse on Wednesday investigators were still trying to identify the suicide bomber through human remains found at the scene of the blast, which tore down part of the police HQ's facade.

Investigators found a large crater at the site, where the bomber set off the explosives after crashing his car through barricades.

The military had sent tanks and armor to the Sinai peninsula to crush the militants, with limited success so far.

Two soldiers were shot dead last week in a botched attempt to arrest Ansar Beit al-Maqdis leader Shadi al-Menei, the military said. Menei escaped.

But the military says it has killed 184 "terrorists" in north Sinai, which borders the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Israel, since Morsi's overthrow.

The sparsely populated desert and mountain region has presented a challenge to the army, which was unaccustomed to fighting against a sustained militant campaign.

In November, an Ansar Beit al-Maqdis bombing killed 11 soldiers when an army bus drove past a booby trapped car on a desert road in north Sinai.

Tuesday's attack, however, shocked the military-installed government in its scale and location.

"This is the ugliest kind of terrorism," prime minister Hazem al-Beblawi told reporters on Tuesday after the attack.

"What we saw yesterday was a qualitative transformation in terrorism," he said.

Beblawi, soon after the attack, had branded the Muslim Brotherhood a "terrorist" group, according to a spokesman, but stopped short of blaming it for the bombing.

More than 1,000 people, mostly Islamists, have been killed in street clashes with police in a crackdown on the Brotherhood since Morsi's overthrow.

The Brotherhood says it is committed to peaceful protests to reinstate Morsi and blames the military-installed government for the violence.