Car bomb kills Egypt’s top prosecutor

CAIRO — A car bomb killed Egypt’s top prosecutor on Monday, ripping through his convoy in a Cairo neighbourhood, 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 crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hisham Barakat led the widescale prosecution against figures from the Brotherhood and other Islamists, including former president Mohammed Morsi.

The crackdown against the group has seen the courts handing down mass death sentences.

Militant attacks have focused on police and the military, but in recent months have turned to target the judiciary with the killings of several judges in Sinai.