State media cited the Health Ministry as providing the injury toll of 29 in Thursday’s bombing, and the Interior Ministry said six of those hurt were police officers.
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Militants based in the Sinai, who support the Islamic State group that controls parts of Iraq and Syria and have a presence in Egypt’s neighbour Libya, have previously claimed responsibility for attacks on security forces.
Since July 2013, gunmen have been carrying out terrorist attacks in Sinai, killing members of Egypt’s security forces. The group also claimed responsibility for a vehicle bombing on the Italian consulate in central Cairo last month that killed one and wounded 10, representing the first evidence of the IS affiliates in Egypt going after Western targets.
Egyptian insurgents frequently have targeted different security installations. Each new attack has chipped away at Egyptians’ sense of security and claims by Mr. Sisi’s government to have gained the upper hand over the militants.
Thursday’s bombing left a wide crater near to the four-storey concrete police building.
On the day it was permitted by ministers, Islamic militants launched a multi-pronged assault trying to grab a northern Sinai city, hitting the army with suicide assaults and battling troopers for hours. It also shattered colored glass windows and cracked the walls of a nearby palace built by Muhammad Ali, an early 19th-century ruler of Egypt.
ISIS announced its involvement in the explosion in a public broadcast over the Al-Bayan radio station where it claimed that the “soldiers of the caliphate” had carried out the attack. A statement issued by the IS Egypt affiliate and circulated by supporters online said it was to avenge the execution of six convicted militants in May. “We are not living in a normal state here”.
The attack seems to have been a auto bomb, and suggests that Sinai Peninsula is only getting more adept at using them.
Access to the area was highly restricted, even in the minutes immediately following the blast, with dozens of policemen, plainclothes and uniformed, on guard.
The prosecutor general’s office said the bomb was hidden inside the bed of a white pickup truck, which detonated shortly after its driver parked next to the building then sped off on a motorcycle.
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The law has come under fire from human rights groups that accuse Sisi of rolling back freedoms won in the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
