April 16, 2014 | Quote

The Latest Cairo Bombings Are Part of a Militant Jihadists’ Campaign to Assassinate Police

An Egyptian brigadier general became the latest casualty in an ongoing militant jihadist campaign to assassinate police officers after three bombs exploded outside Cairo University's campus on Wednesday.

Brigadier General Tarek al-Mergawi, chief of the West Giza police investigations, was giving orders to his colleagues just outside the school when the first bomb exploded, according to survivors of the blast.

Al-Mergawi was standing at a location where police were gathering in anticipation of student demonstrations. Two bombs left under a tree near al-Mergawi exploded, killing him and injuring several others, including other senior officers. A third bomb, hidden in the branches of another tree nearby, exploded but no one was injured.

Many of the more ambitious operations have eventually been claimed by a group called Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), but David Barnett, a research associate at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who studies Salafi jihadists in Egypt, says that the vast majority have gone unclaimed.

Some of these unclaimed attacks were perpetrated by named organizations such as called Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis he believes, but others may have been the work of informal cells, acting alone.

“Just like you have freelance journalists, you could have a freelance jihadist,” Barnett told VICE News.

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Issues:

Egypt