Egyptian police killed in bomb blast linked to Islamist militants

A bomb blast tore through a police compound in Egypt’s Nile Delta today, killing 12 people and wounding 134 in one of the deadliest attacks since the army deposed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July.

The army-backed government vowed to fight “black terrorism”, saying the blast at 1.10am local time in Mansoura, north of Cairo, would not derail a political transition plan whose next step is a referendum next month on a new constitution.

With eight policemen among the dead, the blast pointed to the risk of militancy moving to the densely populated Nile Valley from the Sinai Peninsula, where attacks have killed some 200 members of the security forces since Morsi’s downfall.

“We face an enemy that has no religion or nation,” interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim said while inspecting the damage. A security source said it may have been a car bomb.

Morsi, the nation’s first freely elected leader, was deposed on July 3 and the security forces have killed hundreds in a campaign to repress his Muslim Brotherhood. Today’s bombing prompted a cabinet statement declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist organisation”, though the state news agency did not explicitly accuse the group of staging the attack. The Brotherhood condemned the blast as “an attack on the unity of the Egyptian people”.