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Egypt's army blames Muslim Brotherhood
for attack on army bus
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[March 13, 2014]
CAIRO (Reuters) — Egypt's army
blamed the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood for an attack on an army bus
which killed one officer and wounded three others in the capital on
Thursday, violence underscoring growing security threats to the
military-backed government.
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 Masked gunmen had opened fire on the vehicle in central Cairo,
security forces said.
"Masked armed men belonging to the terrorist Brotherhood targeted a
bus of the armed forces ... which led to the martyrdom of the
Warrant Officer Yusri Mahmoud Mohamed Hassan," the army spokesman
said in a statement posted on Facebook.
Islamist militants are expanding their insurgency in Egypt where
army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew Mohamed
Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July, is expected to announce he
will run for president within days.
The most active group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, has claimed
responsibility for a series of high-profile attacks on senior
security officials, including an assassination attempt on the
interior minister last year.
A security crackdown has devastated the Brotherhood, driving Egypt's
most organized political organization underground. The Brotherhood,
which the interim government declared a terrorist group in December,
says it is committed to peaceful activism.
Most of its leaders are in prison and it denies carrying out
attacks.
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Militants based in the Sinai peninsula near the Israeli border are
still a major security threat to the Arab world's biggest nation
despite army offensives, including air strikes.
They have stepped up attacks on soldiers and policemen since Mursi's
ouster, killing hundreds and spreading their campaign to Cairo and
other cities.
(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh and Shadia Nasralla;
writing by Noah
Browning; editing by Michael Georgy and Louise Ireland)
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