CAIRO — A series of three bombs went off Wednesday outside Cairo University, killing a police general and wounding seven people, introducing a new level of violence to the almost daily battles at campuses fought by Egyptian police and students loyal to ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
Universities have emerged as the main center of the campaign of protests by Morsi’s supporters against the military-backed government that replaced him. A fierce crackdown the past nine months has made significant rallies by Islamists in the streets nearly impossible.
The result has been increasingly deadly clashes between protesters and security forces in and around the walled campuses, with several students killed the past weeks.
The blasts Wednesday targeted a post of riot police deployed outside Cairo University in case of protests, in apparent retaliation for police assaults.
The first two blasts sprayed nails packed into the explosives, killing police Brig. Gen. Tareq al-Mergawy, with a nail that pierced his heart, a spokesman for the state forensics department, Hesham Abdel-Hamid, told the private TV CBC.
Four civilians and three senior police officers were wounded, including the deputy police chief of Giza province, where Cairo University is located.
A new group that first appeared in January, Ajnad Misr, or “Egypt’s Soldiers,” claimed responsibility for the bombing.
