Cairo bomb attack raises fears of more turmoil in Egypt

Egypt’s top public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, died of wounds sustained in a car bomb attack on his convoy as it was leaving his home on Monday, becoming the most senior state official killed in militant violence since the toppling of an Islamist president two years ago. Judges and other senior officials have increasingly been targeted by radical Islamists opposed to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and angered by hefty prison sentences imposed on members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Last month, the Islamic State militant group’s Egypt affiliate urged followers to attack judges, opening a new front in the Islamist insurgency in Egypt.

Terrorism killed the top man of our prosecution, but despite this we will not be scared and we will continue our work.

Judge Ashraf Abdelhady

Monday’s attack stirred fears of yet more turmoil in Egypt, which has been struggling since the 2011 popular uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak to regain full stability and revive the economy of the Arab world’s most populous country. The bombing also showed the risk of militant Islam threatening the Egyptian state leadership, as it did in the 1980s and 1990s. State media confirmed the death of Barakat, 64, at a hospital in the residential district of Heliopolis where he had undergone surgery hours earlier, and it said he would receive a military funeral.

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