CAIRO: Shattering a months-long respite from deadly attacks in the capital, a bomb blast beside Egypt’s Foreign Ministry killed three policemen on Sunday, including a key witness in a trial of deposed President Muhammad Mursi.

Ajnad Misr, the militant group that carried out the last significant attack in Cairo, claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement posted on their official Twitter account.

“This new operation shows we can penetrate and reach the vicinity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...to destroy the officers of the criminal security agencies and make them taste some of what they have made Muslims taste,” it said.

“Operations of retribution and revenge by this blessed group will not stop,” said the group, whose name means Soldiers of Egypt.

The blast brought down a tree onto a car, meters from a congealing puddle of blood where one of the victims had fallen, an AFP correspondent said. It came hours after President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi departed for New York for the UN General Assembly where he is expected to discuss militancy in the region.

Police cordoned off the scene, in a crowded district in central Cairo along the Nile River, and scoured it with sniffer dogs for more bombs.

One of the officers, Mohamed Mahmud Abu Sarie, had testified in a court case on a prison break involving ousted President Muhammad Mursi in 2011, a security official said.

Some passersby gathered around chanting “the people demand the execution of the Brotherhood,” referring to the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood movement of Mursi.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian military aircraft crashed on a training mission on Sunday after a technical failure, killing six soldiers, the army said. The aircraft came down about 100 km south of Cairo, an army statement said. “During military training, a technical failure led to the crash of an aircraft carrying troops in Kom Aushim in Fayoum province ... killing six soldiers and injuring one,” the army said.