Gunmen on a motorbike killed a senior Egyptian Interior Ministry official outside his home in Cairo on Tuesday, putting pressure on the military-backed government as it struggles to contain an Islamist insurgency.
The death of General Mohamed Saeed, head of the technical office of the minister of interior, suggested militants were stepping up their campaign against the state at a delicate time in Egyptian politics.
Army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who toppled president Mohamed Mursi in July, is expected to announce his candidacy for the same post in the coming days, a move that will anger the Muslim Brotherhood to which Mursi belonged.
Sisi unveiled a political roadmap meant to lead to free and fair elections and stability when he toppled Mursi following mass protests against his rule. Egypt has instead witnessed chaos and increasingly brazen Islamist militants.
The Brotherhood accuses Sisi of staging a coup that has undermined democratic gains made since an uprising ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Hundreds of its supporters were killed in clashes with security forces across Egypt in August.
In the violence since Mursi was toppled, hundreds of members of the security forces have also been killed.
Although authorities have managed to reduce the size of street protests, there is no quick solution for curbing militant violence, as the site of Saeed’s assassination suggests.
A bullet shattered the window of the car he was in during broad daylight – a reminder of the Islamist insurgency that raged for several years in the 1990s until Mubarak crushed it.
Saeed’s assassination came hours before Mursi appeared in court at a Cairo police academy to face charges of kidnapping and killing policemen after a jailbreak during the uprising.
Mursi, who faces charges in three other cases, was not allowed to freely scream slogans against Sisi and the army-backed government, as he did in previous court sessions.
This time he was held in a glass cage with a sound system controlled by the court, another example of the crackdown on dissent which has drawn criticism from human rights groups.
At one point Mursi said he was still the legitimate president of Egypt, and asked the judiciary not to engage in political revenge.
Screaming at the judge, he said: “Who are you? Don’t you know who I am?” “I am the chief of Egypt’s Criminal Court,” replied the judge. At other times Mursi, in a white training suit, paced in his cage.