A low-ranking police officer, Kahlifa Ali Hassan, was shot dead Saturday night in Beni Suef governorate, said the head of the Interior Ministry media office in a statement. Hassan was killed while he was sitting in a car next to the driver, before two men riding a motor bike shot live bullets in his direction, the statement read. Shootings, mainly targeting police and army officers as well as state officials, have become a near weekly occurrence in Egypt since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Although the militant insurgency has been predominantly active in North Sinai, attacks spilled out of the restive peninsula, often in the form of drive-by shootings and IED attacks. In September, a conscript was shot dead and a police officer injured, as unknown assailants opened fire at a police convoy near Badrasheen in Giza. The patrol was monitoring the security in the area, when assailants shot at the convoy from inside a crop field before fleeing the scene. Last August, Ali Abdel Wahab, an officer in the Beni Suef Security Directorate, died as a result of injuries after unknown assailants had shot him in Fayoum while he was on his way to work.
