Cairo car bomb kill Egyptian prosectutor

Smoke and flames rise above a burning cars at the scene of a bombing targeting the convoy of the Egyptian Prosecutor General, in a northern suburb of Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt, June 29, 2015. According to reports Egypt's Prosecutor General, Hisham Barakat, is receiving treatment in hospital for injuries to his face and shoulder. Two of his guards and a civilian were also injured in the incident on Barakat's route between his office and home which left at least five cars destroyed. In an uncorroborated statement the group calling themselves the Giza Popular Resistance have claimed responsibility. (EPA/HATEM SAFWAT)

A car bomb killed Egypt's top prosecutor on Monday, ripping through his convoy in a Cairo neighborhood, in the first assassination of a top official in the country in a quarter century, marking an apparent escalation by Islamic militants in their campaign of revenge attacks for a 2-year-old crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hisham Barakat led the widescale prosecution against figures from the Brotherhood and other Islamists, including former President Mohammed Morsi, who was ousted by the military in July 2013. The crackdown against the group has seen the courts handing down mass death sentences against Morsi and other Islamists

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