CAIRO, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian police on Tuesday killed two members of a militant group loyal to the outlawed Islamist group Muslim Brotherhood, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The pair, two college students aged 24 and 21, were killed in a shootout with police who raided their hiding place on the outskirts of Cairo, the statement said.
Police found nine guns and ammunition in their possession, it added.
They are among the leading members of the Hasm terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood's armed wing, which is responsible for carrying out a terror attack in Cairo in early May that killed three policemen, said the statement.
The Hasm group has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks that killed several policemen in Egypt.
Over the past two weeks, Egyptian police have killed about 20 terrorists in Giza province near Cairo and in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. The terrorists were from the Cairo-based Hasm group and the restive Sinai peninsula.
Egypt has been battling growing terror activities after the military toppled former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule.
Terror attacks in Egypt used to be centered in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers over the past few years.
On July 7, a car-bomb attack at a checkpoint in North Sinai's Rafah city killed and wounded 26 soldiers, while the security forces killed at least 40 of the terrorists.
The Egyptian military and police have killed hundreds of militants and arrested as many as terror 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.
