Policeman, driver killed, 4 others injured in blast in Egypt’s Alexandria

Ns News Online Desk: DUBAI: A policeman died on Saturday in a bomb attack in Egypt’s Alexandria which hit a convoy of the city’s security chief, officials said.
The car bomb attack in the northern port city also wounded four others, the government press office added, just days ahead of Egypt’s presidential election which starts on Monday. It is believed the attack was targeting General Mostafa el-Nemr, Alexandria’s security chief, but his office later confirmed he was not among the casualties of the “terrorist bombing that targeted the convoy. “Health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said the casualties were taken to a military hospital in the Mediterranean city.
Photographs posted online showed burned-out cars and thick black smoke at the site of the attack on Al-Moaskar Al-Romani street, near a police station.
“On Saturday March 24 an explosive device planted underneath a car exploded … as the Alexandria security chief drove by,” Egypt’s interior ministry said in a statement.
Egypt’s state news agency MENA quoted Nemr as saying that two people, a policeman and a driver, were killed in the blast.
No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion.
Egypt has been under a state of emergency since April 2017, when suicide bombings struck two Coptic Christian churches on Palm Sunday in an attack claimed by the local affiliate of Daesh.
Eyewitnesses said police and military personnel had formed a perimeter around the site of the explosion, which took place two days before the country is due to hold a presidential election.
Images believed to be taken of the aftermath show smoke rising from the burning remains of a vehicle in a built up residential area.