2nd LD: One security guard killed, 2 wounded in attack on Niger Embassy in Cairo

At least one security guard was killed and another two were wounded during the early hours Wednesday in an attack on Niger's Embassy here, Egypt's official news agency MENA reported.

Three gunmen in a car opened fire on the policemen outside of Niger's embassy in Giza's Al-Haram district, southwest of the capital, and fled the scene, MENA said.

The officers killed and injured had been standing guard at the embassy, the news agency said.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting, but Sinai Province, a militant group claiming loyalty to the extremist group Islamic State (IS), was responsible for most of the previous attacks.

Initial investigation revealed that at least 15 bullets had been fired at the security personnel, seven of which have penetrated the body of the dead guard. The two wounded have been transferred to the nearest hospital.

The interior ministry has shut down all the nearby streets and has been searching for the perpetrators.

The embassy was closed at the time of the attack, meaning the perpetrators were targeting the security guards rather than the embassy staff, a security guard was quoted by the state-run Ahram website as saying.

Anti-security attacks in Egypt, mostly in the Sinai Peninsula, have been escalating, causing hundreds of deaths among soldiers and policemen.

The IS-affiliated group has claimed a car bombing outside the Italian Consulate in Cairo this month, which left one civilian dead and nine others wounded.

Security experts said militancy in Egypt has seen qualitative development and new techniques in fighting. Moreover, the Jihadists now tend to target foreign diplomatic missions in the capital instead of security checkpoints in Sinai as in previous attacks, which signals a greater presence of militants in the Delta provinces, the experts said. Enditem