CAIRO, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian police killed in raid Tuesday two members of a militant group loyal to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood Islamist group, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The police said the information confirmed they belonged to Hasm group, which claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks in Egypt, referring to the group as a Brotherhood's armed wing.
The pair, two college students aged 24 and 21, are among the leading members of Hasm terrorist group and they are responsible for orchestrating and carrying out a terror attack in Cairo in early May that killed three policemen, said the statement.
The police raided their hiding place on the outskirts of Cairo, killed them in a shootout and found nine guns and ammunition in their possession according to the statement.
Over the past two weeks, the police similarly killed about 20 in Giza province near Cairo and in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, referring to them as terrorists from Cairo-based Hasm group and from restive Sinai.
Egypt has been battling growing terror activities following the military removal of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently-blacklisted Brotherhood group.
Terror attacks had been centered in restive North Sinai before they prevailed nationwide, killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers over the past few years.
On July 7, a car-bomb terrorist attack on a checkpoint in North Sinai's Rafah city killed and wounded 26 soldiers, while the security forces killed at least 40 of the terrorists.
Most of the anti-government terrorist operations were claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State (IS) militant group.
The Egyptian military in cooperation with the police killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country's anti-terror war declared in 2013 by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who was then the army chief, following Morsi's removal.
