Zimpapers Logo

General Hisham Barakat

EGYPT’S top prosecutor died following a bomb attack on his convoy yesterday, an Egyptian official announced. State Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat was en route to his office from his home in the eastern Heliopolis suburb of Cairo when the bomb struck, according to a security official.

Barakat, 65, died due to injuries from the attack at a nearby hospital where he was taken for treatment, Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zind told the AFP news agency.

The attack comes two years after millions of Egyptians demanded Egypt’s Islamic President Mohammed Morsi step down in 2013. Due to the anniversary of the event, Egyptian security forces were already on high alert.

Two guards and two policemen were also wounded in the attack, according to the Egypt Independent newspaper.

The bomb was allegedly detonated remotely and explosive experts searched the area for other possible devices after the attack, MENA reported.

The event comes soon after Islamist militants opposed to Egypt President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have targeted judges and other officials with attacks.

A small group called the Giza Popular Resistance claimed responsibility for the attack on its Facebook page, but officials and news agencies were unable to confirm their involvement.

The attack on Barakat is the first major assassination attempt on a high government official since the 2013 suicide bombing targeting the then-interior minister Mohammed Ibrahim. Egypt’s main Islamic militant group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis — which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group fighting in Iraq and Syria — claimed responsibility for that attack.

Now known as Sinai Province, the group has claimed responsibility for most of the country’s major suicide bombings and assassinations. On Sunday, it released a video of a May attack that killed three judges in the northern Sinai Peninsula city of el-Arish — the group’s main base. The Sinai attack came on the same day as an Egyptian court sentenced Morsi to death over a mass prison break during 2011 uprising that eventually brought him to power.

That was Morsi’s first death sentence but he is also facing several other trials on charges that carry the death penalty. — AP.