Policeman shot dead, another injured in Cairo attack

Gunmen on a motorbike killed a policeman and wounded another in a drive-by shooting in the Egyptian capital on Saturday, the interior ministry said.

"Armed men on a motorcycle opened fire on the police before fleeing," ministry spokesman Hani Abdel Latif told AFP.

The two victims have been identified as policeman Mahmoud Abdel Moneim, killed during the incident, and Alshahhat Ahmed Abdelhafiz, wounded and currently in hospital in Giza, reported Alsharq al-Awsat news agency.

The police officers had been guarding branches of two foreign banks, Britain's HSBC and Union National Bank of the United Arab Emirates, when they were attacked near a Cairo square.

On Friday, two Egyptian army personnel were killed and one injured in an explosion in the early hours of Friday in the northwestern Sinai Peninsula.

No group has claimed responsibility for either attack as of yet. 

For more than a year now, the has been a rise in militant attacks against army personnel, policemen and security sites, the deadliest of which claimed the lives 31 troops on 24 October.

Scores of policemen and soldiers have been killed in bombings and shootings since the Egyptian military deposed freely-elected president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Most of the attacks have been in the Sinai Peninsula, the deadliest of them claimed by Beit al-Maqdis, a militant group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organisation.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which means Partisans of Jerusalem, was formed during the security vacuum that followed the overthrow of long-time president Hosni Mubarak in the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

The group expanded its operations after the June 2013 popularly-backed military coup that overthrew president Morsi.

It has said it wants to implement Islamic law, and avenge those killed in the crackdown that followed Morsi's overthrow.