Bombings in Egypt kill six policemen, civilian

At least seven people, including six policemen, were killed and six others wounded on Friday in two separate bomb attacks targetting security forces in Egypt, the country's interior ministry said.

The first attack struck in the western Talibiya neighbourhood of Cairo, shortly before the Friday Muslim prayers and when the capital's streets are mostly empty.

The Hassam Movement, a militant group which has claimed a string of recent attacks, said it was behind the bombing, in a statement circulated on social media.

The interior ministry said in a statement that the bomb exploded next to a checkpoint, killing two officers, a policeman and three enlisted personnel. Three other conscripts were wounded.

The second blast took place in the evening on a road linking the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh to the northern coastal town of Baltim.

The ministry said on its Facebook page that a "roadside bomb exploded... slightly wounding two policemen who were patrolling in a car and killing a civilian... who happened to be in the vicinity".

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the second attack.

Militants have repeatedly attacked police and soldiers since the army overthrew democratically-elected president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and unleashed a bloody crackdown on his followers.

Most of the attacks are carried out in the Sinai Peninsula in eastern Egypt by a branch of Daesh, which has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen.

But security forces and government officials have also been targetted in the capital.

Most of the Cairo attacks in recent months have been claimed by two little-known militant groups, Lawaa al-Thawra and the Hassam Movement.

Police say Hassam and Lawaa Al-Thawra are affiliated with Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement, which was banned months after his overthrow and listed as a terrorist organisation.

The Brotherhood, which espoused grassroots work and change through elections, denies it is involved in violence.

The group had been the country's largest opposition movement under dictator Hosni Mubarak, and dominated polls after his overthrow in 2011. In 2012, the Brotherhood movement won a presidential election with its candidate, Morsi. The army overthrew him, one year later, amid mass protests against Morsi's rule.

Friday's bombings came days after the interior ministry said police killed three Hassam Movement members in southern Egypt, and weeks after it announced it had broken up one of the group's cells.