Militants Kill Three Police Officers in Egypt as Violent Attacks Spread

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CAIRO — Unidentified militants killed three police officers on Monday in the North Sinai, shot and injured two others outside a Catholic school in the Nile Delta, and attacked two banks in Alexandria, Egyptian state media reported, in a continuing surge of low-level violence aimed at businesses and security forces.
The attacks came a day after a blast outside a Carrefour supermarket in Alexandria killed one person and injured four others. Two other explosions went off Sunday near two Alexandria police stations, injuring four other people at one of them.
The three police officers in the North Sinai were killed on Monday in an attack on a military vehicle that also left three others wounded. One of the Alexandria banks was attacked with a Molotov cocktail. The other bank and the officers outside the Catholic school were attacked by masked gunmen.
All of the violence was part of a campaign of attacks that began after the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013. Islamist militants based in the North Sinai have killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers and last fall pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
In recent months, newer groups of more widely dispersed and amateurish militants have begun claiming responsibility for an escalating pattern of attacks on businesses, electrical utilities and other buildings in an apparent effort to discourage investment.
The government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is hosting an international investment conference in Sharm el-Sheikh next weekend, and the recent attacks may have been aimed at undermining it.