A police officer was killed Wednesday in a drive-by shooting at a checkpoint on the Assuit highway in Giza. The attack, which left two other officers injured, took place in the town of Badrashin. The attack was executed by unknown assailants on motorcycles, using automatic firearms, the Ministry of Interior said Wednesday. The checkpoint had been placed there to verify the security status of the area, which falls under the jurisdiction of Badrashin's police station on the Cairo-Assiut road. The prosecution started an investigation and ordered the forensic medicine department to investigate the crime scene; the prosecution will receive a report from the National Security Apparatus about the incident. Security forces have positioned security check points in the vicinity of the attack. No militant group has claimed responsibility as of yet. Last September, another militant attack occurred in Badrashin during which a conscript was shot dead and a police officer injured, as unknown assailants opened fire at a police convoy. Shootings that target police, army officers, and state officials have become a near weekly occurrence in Egypt since the ousting of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Although the militant insurgency has been predominantly active in North Sinai, militant attacks targeting public facilities as well as police and army facilities and personnel have spilled out of the volatile peninsula, often in the form of drive-by shootings and IED attacks.
