Cairo Hit By Four Explosions as Egypt Insurgency Escalates

Cairo was rocked by four explosions that killed at least six people and injured 80, and severely damaged artefacts inside a major Egyptian museum.

The first and largest explosion was a car bomb that struck Cairo's police headquarters early on Friday morning – the eve of the third anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.

Three smaller blasts later struck near a cinema, metro station and a police station in west Cairo. All appeared to target policemen, with officials saying the fourth was aimed at the motorcade of a senior police officer.

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But David Barnett, an analyst specialising in the insurgency and a research associate at the Washington-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said evidence for Brotherhood involvement in the attacks was tenuous at best. “While Ansar Beit el-Maqdis has acknowledged having former members of the Muslim Brotherhood within its ranks, these are former members who specifically left because they were upset that the Muslim Brotherhood was not implementing violent jihad,” he said.

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