Gunmen kill eight police on outskirts of Cairo

Gunmen killed eight policemen dressed in civilian clothes in an attack on a police vehicle in the Helwan district, south of Cairo, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said on Sunday.

The ministry said the policemen were travelling in a minivan when four gunmen with automatic weapons got out of a small pick-up truck, stopped the police war, sprayed it with automatic rifle fire, and then fled.

The interior ministry said the dead included a lieutenant and seven lower ranking policemen who were patrolling the area just south of the capital when they were ambushed late at night.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Jihadists, including Islamic State group militants, have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers in attacks, mostly in the Sinai Peninsula and also in and around Cairo.

Egyptian criminal gangs have also killed policemen in shoot outs, but the attack bore the hallmarks of jihadists who have waged an insurgency since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Militants had struck before in Helwan, killing a policeman standing guard outside a museum in June 2015.

The jihadists, who are based in the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, have repeatedly tried to make inroads in the capital, where police have had more success in quelling them than in Sinai.

In March, Isis gunmen killed 15 policemen in an attack on a checkpoint near the El-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai.

Jihadists  have claimed several attacks in Cairo, including an attempted assassination of the interior minister in late 2013 and the bombing of the Italian consulate in July 2015.

More recently militants have conducted hit and run attacks on policemen in Cairo and small scale bombings.