CAIRO: Bombers killed a policeman and a soldier in Egypt Friday, hours before campaigning starts in presidential polls which the former army chief who deposed the elected Islamist leader is expected to win.
Militants have unleashed a wave of attacks targeting security forces since presidential frontrunner Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Mohamed Morsi in July.
The army led by the now retired field marshall also installed an interim government that has waged a deadly crackdown on Morsi´s supporters and his Muslim Brotherhood movement.
A bomb struck a traffic police kiosk near a courthouse in the north Cairo district of Heliopolis, killing one policeman and wounding four others, interior ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif told.
The interior ministry later said the bomb had been concealed in a traffic light.
The attack came just hours after two suicide bombers attacked a checkpoint and a nearby bus outside the South Sinai provincial capital Al-Tur, security officials said.A soldier was killed and six policemen wounded by the first bomber, and five civilians wounded by the second, the officials said.
Security forces have deployed in strength to protect the resorts along the South Sinai coast that are a major plank of the country´s battered tourism sector.
Friday´s bombings came a day before the start of official campaigning in the May 26-27 presidential election which will see leftist leader Hamdeen Sabbahi as Sisi´s sole rival.
Sabbahi came third in the 2012 election which Morsi won, and is seen by supporters as the only leader representing the aspirations of those who revolted against longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011.A statement from the prime minister´s officer said, meanwhile, that Friday´s violence would not undermine Egypt´s determination to hold "fair presidential and parliamentary polls".
Morsi´s Brotherhood, which swept all elections since Mubarak´s fall, is blacklisted as a "terrorist" organisation and said it will boycott the polls.
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