News / Egypt

Shooting leaves Egyptian university dean injured

Thursday, 17 December 2015 3:35 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 17 December 2015 3:35 PM ]

Abdel Hakim Nur al-Din, the head of the Egytian Zagazig University

Gunmen have shot and wounded the dean of an Egyptian university in the African country’s northeastern province of el-Sharqia, police say.

According to Egyptian police sources, the masked assailants on Thursday shot Abdel Hakim Nur el-Din, the head of the Zagazig University, in the leg as he waited for his driver outside his home.

The unidentified armed men then fled the scene, added the police officials. The motive of the attack, however, remains unknown.

Egypt has witnessed a fresh wave of tensions after the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in July 2013 in a military coup led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the then army commander and the current president.

Since then, Egypt has been the scene of massive anti-government protests. Students supporting Morsi have also staged demonstrations against the authorities at several Egyptian universities.

In response, Cairo has adopted a heavy-handed clampdown on opponents of the country’s military-backed government, arresting hundreds dead and thousands more, including many student demonstrators.

This is while militants have also regularly carried out attacks across the North African state, but their targets have mostly been members of the security forces in the violence-plagued Sinai Peninsula.

The Daesh-affiliated militant group Velayat Sinai, previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks in Sinai.

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