Egypt prosecutor Barakat dies after Cairo bomb attack

Egypt's top prosecutor has died after a bomb attack. Hisham Barakat and his bodyguards had been taken to hospital after their car was hit outside a military academy in the Heliopolis neighborhood of the Egyptian capital.

Egyptian Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat died of injuries sustained in an apparent remote-control bombing, state television reported on Monday. The state news agency MENA had initially reported that Barakat suffered "light injuries" in the explosion. By afternoon, that assessment had been revised.

"He has passed away," Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zind told the AFP news agency at the hospital on Monday.

The little-known Giza Popular Resistance claimed responsibility for the bomb on Facebook. The group also uploaded photos which it claimed were from the attack. Officials could not verify the claim, but said the bomb had not been placed under Barakat's car as the group had boasted.

An official at the hospital told the Associated Press news agency that Barakat had suffered multiple shrapnel wounds to the shoulder, chest and liver and doctors had attempted to save him through emergency surgery.

Heeding 'IS' call?

Monday's bombing followed calls by Sinai Province, an Egyptian group that has sworn allegiance to the "Islamic State," to carry out the attacks on judiciary after the hanging of six alleged militants. Egypt's judges and officials have been increasingly targeted by militants in recent months. On Sunday, the group released video of an attack that killed three judges on Egypt's Sinai peninsula in May.

Groups opposing the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have also launched a string of attacks, apparently in response to the hefty sentences handed down to members of the Muslim Brotherhood in various trials. Since President Mohammed Morsi was overthrown by Sisi and the military in 2013, Barakat had referred thousands of the Muslim Brotherhood's supporters to trial, with hundreds then sentenced to death.

Monday's attack came with security forces already on high alert on the eve of the second anniversary of the massive demonstrations against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood that paved the way, days later, for the military coup to oust the president and ultimately install Sisi as Egypt's leader.

mkg/msh (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)