One killed in restaurant attack north of Cairo

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One person was killed in an attack on a restaurant north of Cairo on Thursday, Egypt’s state news agency MENA reported.

A fire broke out at the Kentucky Fried Chicken in a town in the province of Menoufia, after assailants on a motorcycle threw flammable materials and then opened fire, it said. One person was wounded.

Frequent small-scale attacks have hurt Egypt’s efforts to project an image of stability after four years of turmoil triggered by the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. Egypt hosts an investment conference next month in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, in the southern Sinai Peninsula.

In the main Sinai city of El-Arish, gunmen in a car opened fire on policemen guarding a hotel used by police officers, killing one and wounding another, security officials said.

Last week, Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate claimed responsibility for attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula that killed at least 30 people.

Islamist militants in Sinai have stepped up attacks on police and soldiers since the army toppled president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after protests against his rule. Hundreds of police and soldiers have been killed.

Egypt has launched a crackdown in Sinai and systematically repressed Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

On Thursday, a court upheld a death sentence against an Islamist charged with murder during the upheaval following Mursi’s fall, state television said.

In one of the most dramatic scenes of that period captured on video, the man sentenced to death, Mahmoud Hassan Ramadan, threw someone off a rooftop during clashes in Alexandria. An al Qaeda flag was seen tucked into the back of Ramadan’s trousers.

Fifty-seven others were sentenced to 15-25 years in the case.

The Brotherhood, which says it is committed to peaceful activism, has accused the military of staging a coup and curbing freedoms won in the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.